installman [-nv] [-U umask] manpage dir installman [-unv] [-U umask] dir [manpage ...]
Originally, the man(1) program was capable of recognizing a set of macros tmac.an in the the man directory, and using those. This was a more central and easily modified location to change; the recent solaris releases have lost this capability, however.
installman also removes any previously existing file, and sets the permissions to 0444 on the installed page.
installman also sets the section name as it installs man pages, using a hard-coded, built-in table.
Because we are using git(1) for version control now, it's no longer possible to generate version dates via special format codes embedded in the source. Now, installman creates the page date with the following command:
chomp($page_date = `git log -n 1 --pretty=format:%ci $manpage`) ;
Because of confusion about levels of support for Antelope software, installman inserts a special SUPPORT section after the SYNOPSIS for either contributed or deprecated software. The latter is recognized by the presence of the keyword deprecated in the NAME section.
man(5)