pod2man fails with expected text not a number

Question

I am building a legacy version of openSSL to do some testing, but the build is failing. I have already fixed several things, but now have got a new one, the log is reporting that it fails when installing the man pages.

        created directory `/Users/AuserName/Documents/proj/folderName/folderNameA/OpenSSL/tt/OpenSSL-for-iPhone/bin/iPhoneSimulator10.3-i386.sdk/man'
        created directory `/Users/AuserName/Documents/proj/folderName/folderNameA/OpenSSL/tt/OpenSSL-for-iPhone/bin/iPhoneSimulator10.3-i386.sdk/man/man1'
        created directory `/Users/AuserName/Documents/proj/folderName/folderNameA/OpenSSL/tt/OpenSSL-for-iPhone/bin/iPhoneSimulator10.3-i386.sdk/man/man3'
        created directory `/Users/AuserName/Documents/proj/folderName/folderNameA/OpenSSL/tt/OpenSSL-for-iPhone/bin/iPhoneSimulator10.3-i386.sdk/man/man5'
        created directory `/Users/AuserName/Documents/proj/folderName/folderNameA/OpenSSL/tt/OpenSSL-for-iPhone/bin/iPhoneSimulator10.3-i386.sdk/man/man7'
        installing man1/CA.pl.1
        installing man1/asn1parse.1
        installing man1/ca.1
        installing man1/ciphers.1
        installing man1/cms.1
        cms.pod around line 457: Expected text after =item, not a number
        cms.pod around line 461: Expected text after =item, not a number
        cms.pod around line 465: Expected text after =item, not a number
        cms.pod around line 470: Expected text after =item, not a number
        cms.pod around line 474: Expected text after =item, not a number
        POD document had syntax errors at /usr/bin/pod2man5.18 line 72.

The pod files contents in the image so you can see the line numbers:

Maybe try `make install_sw` to avoid building the man pages? — jww, Aug 12 '17 at 05:07

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 09 '17 at 00:19

0

"=item" can only be followed by an option string like in this example:

=item B<--option>

and if you want to pass in values to options, you do something like this:

=item B<--option>=I<value>

Note that the option string has to be enclosed in B<> and the value string has to be enclosed in I<>.

answered Aug 09 '17 at 00:19

Devin L.

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Thanks Devin, where can I find some info on pod files, how they work and how to make them. For now I just disabled the documentation for the build. Thanks for the help. – Wayne Aug 09 '17 at 07:32
@Wayne You can find some info on pod2man here: https://perldoc.perl.org/pod2man.html – Devin L. Aug 09 '17 at 15:59
Thanks Devin. One more question, Does one type the pod files by hand or do you somehow generate them from source files? – Wayne Aug 09 '17 at 16:35
"pod2man is a front-end for Pod::Man, using it to generate *roff input from POD source." from the documentation. Looks like you can generate from the source file. – Devin L. Aug 10 '17 at 00:08
From where does come the claim »"=item" can only be followed by an option string« [perldoc perlpod](http://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html) clearly says: »either use "=item *" for all of them, to produce bullets; or use "=item 1.", "=item 2.", etc., to produce numbered lists; or use "=item foo", "=item bar", etc.« IMHO this answer does not explain at all why `=item 1.` causes an error as it is used as officially documented. – Axel Beckert Nov 19 '17 at 20:38

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 19 '17 at 21:05

It seems that pod2man doesn't dislike numbers in general, but dislikes one specific number: Zero. So try to change all cases of =item 0. to =item 1. and bump potential further =item <some number> by adding 1, too.

Worked fine for me for fixing the same issue in the POD of Net::IRC.

pod2man fails with expected text not a number

2 Answers2

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