Install groff with Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• addftinfo
• afmtodit
• chem
• eqn
• eqn2graph
• gdiffmk
• glilypond
• gperl
• gpinyin
• grap2graph
• grn
• grodvi
• groff
• grog
• grolbp
• grolj4
• gropdf
• grops
• grotty
• hpftodit
• indxbib
• lkbib
• lookbib
• mmroff
• neqn
• nroff
• pdfmom
• pfbtops
• pic
• pic2graph
• post-grohtml
• pre-grohtml

Project history

groff belongs to the roff family that began with early Unix text formatting. The GNU manual places it in the line of roff, nroff, and troff: plain text mixed with formatting requests is processed into terminal, printer, PostScript, PDF, HTML, or DVI output. GNU describes groff as a reimplementation and extension of troff and related AT&T Unix programs.

The package was written primarily by James Clark as the GNU replacement for proprietary Unix troff/nroff tooling. GNU's own distribution archive records early public source releases in 1991 and later tarball history across the 1990s, while the project homepage identifies the Savannah Git repository as the development source.

Over time groff became much more than the `troff` formatter. The package includes preprocessors and helpers such as `eqn`, `tbl`, `pic`, `refer`, `soelim`, `grn`, `chem`, `grog`, and output drivers such as `grops`, `gropdf`, `grohtml`, `grodvi`, and `grotty`. Its macro packages let users write manual pages, memoranda, papers, books, and technical documents without adopting a WYSIWYG editor.

Maintenance also reflects a long-lived GNU package rather than a short utility. The GNU homepage lists G. Branden Robinson as maintainer and Bertrand Garrigues and Werner Lemberg as maintainers emeriti. GNU mailing-list announcements document continuing release work, including the 1.23.0 announcement after years of accumulated documentation, man-page, and code changes.

Adoption history

groff's adoption came from Unix documentation culture. GNU states that groff is widely available on POSIX and other systems because of its long association with Unix manuals, including man pages. On many Linux systems, `man` pipelines historically depended on groff or compatible roff tooling to render installed manual pages.

Distribution packaging made groff ordinary infrastructure: sometimes installed as part of a base system, sometimes split into runtime, documentation, debug, or full packages. The GNU homepage explicitly notes that many GNU/Linux distributions offer groff source and binary packages and may subdivide the installation.

The package also carried older document workflows forward. GNU notes that groff and its predecessor produced several best-selling software engineering texts, and the manual documents workflows that combine low-level requests, macro packages, preprocessors, and output drivers.

How it is used

The usual CLI pattern is a pipeline hidden behind `groff`: preprocessors such as `tbl`, `eqn`, `pic`, or `refer` transform input, `troff` formats it, and a postprocessor targets a terminal, PostScript, PDF, HTML, DVI, or printer format. The `grog` helper can inspect a document and suggest the needed `groff` options.

For everyday package users, groff is most often noticed through `man`, `nroff`, and manual-page macros rather than as a book-production system. For document authors, it remains a programmable text formatting tool where source files are plain text and outputs are generated reproducibly.

Unlike many CLI tools in this batch, groff has no normal per-user credentials and no single project config file. Its behavior is driven by command-line options, macro files, font/devices data, and documents being formatted.

Why package nerds care

groff is package-nerd bedrock. It is a GNU package that exists because Unix documentation is source code too: plain text inputs, macros, preprocessors, build rules, and deterministic outputs. Removing or replacing it affects not one app but the documentation pipeline of an operating system.

It also explains why package manifests sometimes contain a surprising pile of tiny executables. `groff` is a suite with historical Unix tool boundaries preserved: separate commands for tables, equations, pictures, bibliographies, device conversion, and terminal output.

The package is especially relevant to Homebrew and Unix-like packaging because macOS and BSD systems have had different relationships with groff and mandoc over time. Installing GNU groff gives users the GNU roff toolchain even on platforms where the base system uses a smaller man-page-focused formatter.

Timeline

• 1970s: roff, nroff, and troff became part of early Unix document preparation culture.
• 1980s: ditroff and related preprocessors shaped the model that groff later reimplemented and extended.
• 1991-06-02: GNU's archive records groff 1.02 source distribution.
• 1991-11-17: GNU's archive records groff 1.04 source distribution.
• 1990s: groff became the GNU replacement for proprietary Unix troff/nroff implementations across free Unix-like systems.
• 2001: GNU announced groff 1.17 on the info-gnu mailing list.
• 2018-12 to 2023-07: The 1.23.0 announcement summarized years of work since 1.22.4, including thousands of commits and extensive manual-page updates.
• 2026: GNU's project page documented groff 1.24.1 and the Savannah Git repository as the development source.

Related projects

• AT&T Unix troff, nroff, roff, and ditroff are groff's historical predecessors.
• mandoc is a related man-page-focused formatter used by some BSD-derived systems.
• TeX is the other major historical plain-text typesetting ecosystem often compared with roff-family tools.
• GNU Texinfo overlaps with groff in the broader GNU documentation toolchain.
• man-db and similar manual-page viewers commonly invoke roff-compatible formatters.

Sources

• https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/groff/old/
• https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/groff.git
• https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2023-07/msg00001.html
• https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/
• https://www.gnu.org/software/groff/manual/groff.html