casman

About

casman is a universal man page application with ALL man pages from BSD, macOS, Linux, Void, and other Unix-like systems embedded into a single binary. Like man.cgi but completely self-contained with no external dependencies.

Official Site

https://casman.casapps.us

Features

• Embedded Man Pages - All man pages compiled into a single binary
• Multi-Platform - BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD), macOS, Linux, Void, Alpine, POSIX
• All Sections - Sections 1-9, n (New/Tcl), x (X Window System)
• Multiple Formats - HTML, plain text, Markdown, JSON, raw source
• Search - Full-text search with autocomplete and filters
• Compare - Side-by-side comparison across platforms
• TLDR Summaries - Auto-generated concise examples
• Whatis/Apropos - Traditional man page utilities
• Translations - Support for localized man pages (de, fr, ja, zh, etc.)
• Bookmarks - Save favorites locally (no account required)
• History - Track recently viewed pages
• Export - Download as PDF, EPUB, MOBI
• RSS Feeds - Subscribe to updates
• PWA Support - Installable, offline-capable
• Dark/Light Theme - System preference detection

Production

Docker (Recommended)

docker run -d \
  --name casman \
  -p 64580:80 \
  -v ./rootfs/config:/config:z \
  -v ./rootfs/data:/data:z \
  ghcr.io/casapps/casman:latest

Docker Compose

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/casapps/casman/main/docker/docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d

Binary

# Download latest release
curl -LO https://github.com/casapps/casman/releases/latest/download/casman-linux-amd64
chmod +x casman-linux-amd64
sudo mv casman-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/casman

# Run
casman

# Or install as service
sudo casman --service --install

Client

The casman-cli client provides terminal access to man pages.

# View man page
casman-cli man ls

# Search
casman-cli search "file permission"

# Interactive TUI
casman-cli

Configuration

Configuration file: /etc/casapps/casman/server.yml (or ~/.config/casapps/casman/server.yml)

server:
  port: 64580
  fqdn: casman.example.com

  ssl:
    enabled: false
    letsencrypt:
      enabled: false
      email: admin@example.com

database:
  driver: sqlite
  path: "{data_dir}/db/server.db"

API

Endpoint	Description
GET /man/{name}	Get man page (HTML)
GET /man/{section}/{name}	Get man page by section
GET /man/{os}/{section}/{name}	Get man page for specific OS
GET /search?q={term}	Search man pages
GET /whatis/{name}	One-line description
GET /apropos?q={term}	Search descriptions
GET /compare/{name}	Compare across platforms
GET /api/v1/*	JSON API endpoints

Full API documentation: /openapi

---

Development

Prerequisites

• Docker (required for building)
• Make

Build

# Development build (quick, no version info)
make dev

# Local build (with version info)
make local

# Full release build (all 8 platforms)
make build

# Run tests
make test

Container-Only Development

All development uses containers. Never run Go directly on your machine.

# Start development environment
make dev

# The binary is built inside Docker and output to a temp directory

License

MIT License - see LICENSE.md