Re: gEDA-dev: Re: [Gnucap-devel] Gnucap docs build failure on FC5(and other places)

[Dan McMahill <dan-at-NOSPAMmcmahill_dot_net>]

Russell Shaw wrote:
> Stuart Brorson wrote:
> 
>> I'll try to refine my point this way:  For Al's Gnucap manual the build
>> chain in question is this:
>>
>> Latex -> dvi -> pdf
>>
>> Many users don't have Latex installed.  In certain situations, this
>> causes Gnucap's configure to die, and you can't build Gnucap before
>> installing Latex.  Not very useful.  Indeed, it's kind of crazy that a
>> build can be prevented beause some doc files can't be generated.
> 
> 
> Well that's the problem. All packages i know of that use latex for
> docs, detect that latex isn't present during install. The package
> installs ok, but the "make pdf" target doesn't work, because the
> build system tells you latex isn't installed.
> 

I'd like to clarify a few things here:

The way the gnucap autoconf/automake build system is currently set up, 
configure does not die if you don't have latex.

When the build system is used to generate the distfile ('make dist' or 
preferably 'make distcheck') then the .dvi, .pdf, and .html versions of 
the manual are included in the distfile.  If you do not use 'make dist' 
or 'make distcheck' to build the distfile, then all bets are off because 
you'll have a mismatch between what you've told the build system and 
what files you've actually provided.

The .dvi and .pdf make up about 0.5 Mb of the 1.5 Mb distfile.  All in 
all, a 1.5 Mb distfile is pretty small not just by todays standards but 
it has been for some time.

When you build from the distfile, you do not normally need latex, 
dvipdf, or hevea because you already have an up to date formatted 
manual.  I set it up this way because not everyone has latex installed 
and certainly not everyone has hevea installed.  And before anyone says 
'most distros have latex', don't forget that there are other operating 
systems people care about (solaris, irix, os/x, *BSD) and they may or 
may not have latex shipped by default.  Also users may not want to 
install LaTeX (two distfiles totalling 73 Mb(!) last I checked) just to 
be able to read a manual in a popular format.

If you edit/remove/touch the .tex files, or the .dvi file, then the 
build system will want to rebuild the .dvi, .pdf, and .html files based 
on the dependency rules.  However, the results of the configure checks 
for latex/dvipdfm/hevea are used so that instead of just bombing out, 
you'll get a warning like:

    You have modified the .tex file however you do not have latex
    installed.  Changes to <foo>.tex will be ignored.

If you outright remove the .dvi, .pdf, or .html files and you don't have 
latex and friends installed, then it is a user error.  If users want a 
way to disable the installation of some form of the manual, it could be 
made a configure option instead of relying on a hack.

The .dvi, .pdf, and .html files are only removed by a 'make 
maintainer-clean' so end users should not accidentally remove them with 
a 'make clean' or 'make distclean'.

So, why all the recent problems?  It is because the recent snapshot 
distfile was not created using the current build system and hence there 
was a mismatch between what the build system is supposed to do and what 
files were actually shipped.  Also it seems that a couple of 
Makefile.am's have gotten slightly out of date. I'll be posting a patch 
to the gnucap list for that.

-Dan



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