how does a role other than admin get to see anything on their menu ?

What you do mean by "managing pages"? Only users or roles assigned "administer users" can grant role membership to others, and only those with "administer permissions" can change what those roles have access to. I have configured plenty of sites where roles which can "administer nodes" and/or "administer taxonomy" cannot "administer users" or "administer permissions." The related menu options are hidden for those roles.

In any case, I think this is out of scope for the admin_menu module issue queue.

I think the question is "how does a role that have access administration menu permission see anything on their menu"

the answer would be

permissions > system module > access administration pages

before they can see anything on the admin_menu

Is this the right answer? I have the same problem.

Case: site, i'm the admin / user $1. Some extra admins are added, but they only have the right to change minor things, like menu's, blocks, content (not modules, Views etc). Let's call them sub-admins.

When i select in permissions the module admin_menu AND module system, the sub-admin can access all pages. So i deselect module system and all the links are gone. Also the menu, blocks etc. However, they can access them through a direct link.

The question is: is it possible for adminmenu to show only the relevant links to an user?

Original issue was a support request which has been resolved
It was marked by mistake as a feature request thus changing it

and since it was resolved with above answer I am closing

@Lenn-art the answer is right for the original question but your Question need more info

When i select in permissions the module admin_menu AND module system, the sub-admin can access all pages. So i deselect module system and all the links are gone. Also the menu, blocks etc. However, they can access them through a direct link.

The question is: is it possible for adminmenu to show only the relevant links to an user?

What is the module system ? do you mean ? "access administration pages" permission ?
in my case I have this enabled for the "sub-admins"

if the answer above don't satisfy your use case feel free to open up a new support with ticket since your scenario seems to be different from above. Please provide clear and complete information since this makes it easier for someone to answer you.

Closing as said on previous post