FreeTDS Development Group

["Brian Bruns" <camber AT ais.org>]

We seem to be slowly sinking into dependancy hell for developers.  I'd
like two things.

a) there are three classes of users: general end users, developers, and
maintainers.  Only maintainers should be required to have the
documentation build tools.  I'd like to see doc builds off entirely unless
the tools are found.

b) We need a list of what is needed.  For end users, nothing but a c
compiler should be needed (make dist should generate any and all
documentation).  For developers, they need appropriate versions of the
autotools (autoconf, automake, libtool only).  For maintainers, there is
jade,doxygen,txt2man,I'm missing stuff I'm sure.

It's just too much to ask an occasional developer to install the complete
chain of tools to submit a patch.  I think it's counterproductive.

> > > 
> > > > I'm going to remove txt2man from our cvs and change the 
> > > > doc/Makefile such
> > > > that it doesn't build man pages unless `which txt2man` 
> > > > returns a positive
> > > > result.  That way, he who will build the docs will find out 
> > > > he needs certain
> > > > freely available tools, and anyone else won't trip on them.  
> > > 
> > > IMHO it's a bad things. txt2man is not installed by default 
> > > by many system.
> > > Or you build and distribute only the compiled things or it 
> > > best to mantain txt2man in CVS.
> > 
> > Here's how I see it, Frediano.  
> > 
> > We didn't write txt2man, so it shouldn't be in our source 
> > repository.  I'm
> > happy to put it on ibiblio, in misc, so there's a convenient 
> > place to find
> > it, but if we're not maintaining it, it doesn't belong in cvs.  
> > 
> > Remember, the only people affected by this are folks using 
> > cvs.  Tarballs
> > include prebuilt documentation.  
> > 
> 
> I added txt2man to CVS, so I explain what I wanted with this change
> 
> 1- developer must be able to build a distribution using just gnu tools
>   (this mean "make dist" and also "make distcheck" work)
> 2- user should make and install without needing txt2man
> 
> To accomplish this (and removing also txt2man from cvs)
> 
> - doc/Makefile.am must build updated man pages automatically. And an error
> should be raised, not ignored (developer must have txt2man or compiled file
> should be there, so make do not build compiled) (point 1)
> - we must distribute compiled man (point 2)
> - we must ditribuite source man (so make process do not see error)
> - developer should install txt2man in his machine
> 
> This sounds good?
> 
> freddy77
>