https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/yelp/-/issues/50

--- yelp-42.2/Makefile.am.orig
+++ yelp-42.2/Makefile.am
@@ -7,6 +7,8 @@
 
 lib_LTLIBRARIES = libyelp/libyelp.la
 
+libexec_SCRIPTS = libyelp/yelp-groff
+
 libyelp_libyelp_la_SOURCES = \
 	libyelp/yelp-bookmarks.c \
 	libyelp/yelp-debug.c \
@@ -58,6 +60,7 @@
 
 libyelp_libyelp_la_CPPFLAGS = \
 	-DDATADIR=\""$(datadir)"\" \
+	-DLIBEXECDIR=\"$(libexecdir)\" \
 	-DYELP_ICON_PATH=\"$(YELP_ICON_PATH)\" \
 	-DYELP_WEB_EXTENSIONS_DIR=\""$(pkglibdir)/"web-extensions\" \
 	-I$(top_builddir)/libyelp
--- /dev/null
+++ yelp-42.2/libyelp/yelp-groff
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+#!/usr/bin/sh
+#
+# Copyright (c) 2011 Alexandre Rostovtsev <tetromino@gmail.com>
+#
+# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
+# modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
+# published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
+# License, or (at your option) any later version.
+#
+# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
+# General Public License for more details.
+#
+# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
+# License along with this program; if not, write to the
+# Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
+# Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
+#
+###
+#
+# Process the requested compressed source nroff file and output groff
+# intermediate format.
+#
+
+filename=$1
+
+if [ -z ${filename} ] ; then
+    echo "Usage: yelp-groff [FILE]" >&2
+    echo "Process a man FILE and output groff intermediate format."
+    exit 1
+fi
+
+# If "man -Z -Tutf8 -EUTF-8" works (i.e. if man is man-db), use that.
+#man -Z -Tutf8 -EUTF-8 ${filename} 2>/dev/null && exit 0
+
+# Otherwise, manually uncompress the file ...
+cat="cat"
+case ${filename} in
+    *.bz2)      cat="bzip2 -c -d" ;;
+    *.gz)       cat="gunzip -c" ;;
+    *.lzma)     cat="unlzma -c -d" ;;
+    *.xz)       cat="unxz -c" ;;
+    *.Z)        cat="zcat" ;;
+esac
+
+# ... and run groff to get the intermediate format; preprocess with tbl
+# unless MANROFFSEQ is defined.
+${cat} ${filename} | groff -${MANROFFSEQ:-t} -man -Z -Tutf8
--- yelp-42.2/libyelp/yelp-man-parser.c.orig
+++ yelp-42.2/libyelp/yelp-man-parser.c
@@ -369,7 +369,7 @@
 {
     gint ystdout;
     GError *err = NULL;
-    const gchar *argv[] = { "man", "-Z", "-Tutf8", "-EUTF-8", path, NULL };
+    const gchar *argv[] = { LIBEXECDIR "/yelp-groff", path, NULL };
     gchar **my_argv;
 
     /* g_strdupv() should accept a "const gchar **". */