Prepare Man to be compiled: patch -Np1 -i ../man-&man-80cols-patch-version;-80cols.patch && patch -Np1 -i ../man-&man-manpath-patch-version;-manpath.patch && patch -Np1 -i ../man-&man-pager-patch-version;-pager.patch && PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/bin \     ./configure -default -confdir=/etc Continue with compiling the package: make And finish off installing the package: make install If you wish to disable SGR escape sequences, you should edit the man.conf file and add the -c argument to nroff. You may want to take a look at the man hint at , which deals with formatting and compression issues for man pages. patch...: These three patches comment out one of the lines in the man.conf file (MANPATH /usr/man) because it will create redundant results when using programs like whatis. It also adds the -R option to the PAGER variable so man pages are displayed properly. Lastly, the patch fixes the problem where man pages are not formatted with more than 80 columns when used with the recent groff versions. PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/bin ./configure -default: The paths to some programs get written into man's files. Unfortunately, the configure script picks the last location in PATH rather than the first where a program is found. By appending /usr/bin:/bin to PATH for the ./configure command, we make sure that man doesn't use the /static versions of our programs.