We have a rc.conf setting for this (makemandb=YES/NO), but we could argue about thedefault (currently: YES).
I am fine with changing that to NO, but I really dislike port-specific defaults (however they are implemented). They just cause confusion. I ran a few more tests, and runtimes vary seriously (partly due to different sets of pkgsrc man pages being installed): SparcStation LX (50 MHz sparc v8), slow scsi disk, 96 MB ram: 2145.91 real 1856.68 user 92.47 sys JavaStation Krups (100 MHz sparc v8), diskless, 64MB ram: 1469.48 real 1127.50 user 118.26 sys HP9000/715/50 (50 MHz hppa), slow scsi disk, 96MB ram: 118.93 real 93.40 user 0.00 sys GuruPlug (1.2 GHz ARM), sata disk, 512 MB ram: 32.44 real 27.78 user 4.24 sys GuruPlug (1.2 GHz ARM), diskless, 512 MB ram: 21.00 real 11.33 user 6.52 sys Apparently something makemandb does is not very performing well on sparc - this needs closer investigation (maybe we can make it faster for everything). Martin