FreeTDS Development Group

["Lowden, James K" <LowdenJK AT bernstein.com>]

> From: Steve Langasek [mailto:vorlon AT netexpress.net]
> Sent: October 16, 2002 3:31 PM
> 
> On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 01:48:35PM -0400, Brian Bruns wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I think this should not be left entirely to autodetection.  Certainly,
> when someone is rolling an official tarball for distribution, 
> it should
> be considered an error if the documentation-creating tools are absent.

I propose:

1. Documentation be built if "--with-docs"
2. Documentation be built if "make dist" (turns on "--with-docs")

In the above two cases, it is an error if anything fails to build.  

3. sgml-based docs be built if openjade is installed
4. man pages be built if txt2man is installed
5. doxygen pages be built if doxygen is installed

Cases 3-5 use detection, produce a warning if tool not found.  Remember to
collect commission for the referral.  

6. doc/Makefile does not attempt to build anything for which outputs are
present and inputs are absent.  

This supports tarballs, which include prebuilt docs.

End proposal.  I will "make happen" if no objections.  

Two obstacles:

A.  I don't know how to cause "make dist" to enable "--with-docs".  

B.  Side note: I don't know how (or where) to install the userguide html
pages.  Currently, doc/Makefile causes them to be built and tarred up, but
"make install" doesn't do anything with them.  Hints fixes patches comments
ideas welcome.  

The common theme to both obstacles is that Makefile.am doesn't mention the
targets "dist" and "install", so I don't know how to include target-specific
code.  

--jkl


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