gtk-doc woes

[Carol Spears]

On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 04:46:13PM -0700, Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> On 10/12/2005 4:34 PM, Carol Spears wrote:
> > i had no problems editing ./autogen.sh where necessary since
> > xfce-developers and debian have a different idea of which auto* versions
> > get the symlink.  
> > 
one thing interesting about this was that when i told autotools where
automake-1.8 and kin were, it managed to find automake-1.9 all on its
own.  i don't know if that is helpful for you or not -- it is so 
interesting how auto* things work.

> If you want to install the development version, you're going to have to
> have a complete set of development tools installed.  If someone wants to
> come up with a non-intrusive patch that makes gtk-doc optional for SVN
> builds (while keeping the default of reqiuring it), then by all means,
> they should submit it.  I personally have better things to do with my time.
> 
it might be a good place for me to figure out this stuff, i will be
honest, i was impressed when i got autogen.sh to ignore the symlink and
find the installed software it wanted and more.  maybe poking around in
and messing up my checkout of the xfce4-dev-tools might be just what i
need to deflate my ego right now!

> At any rate, the messages you've encountered are related to building API
> documentation for the core libraries, not for end-user documentation.  I
> don't recall exactly, but I believe docbook is indeed optional for the
> end-user docs.
> 
two things about me and my experience.  i tend to fit somewhere between
developer and end-user which can be nice for testing things.  the other
thing is that i really really really looked at docbook.  there were so
many things that i liked about it until i really looked at it.  added to
the fact that the publisher of the book i bought written by the author
of docbook doesn't use the software to make their books with -- well, i
am finished with the whole thing and worried about what that extra layer
of software is doing on good developers desktops.

i ditched docbook when we redesigned the gimp web site.  that software
has problems but nothing that is built in.  interestingly enough, this
seems to be when the gimp tool kit started to force its developers to
depend on it.

> IIRC, the problem with gtk-doc is that you can sometimes get a broken
> configure script if it's not installed when you run autogen.  I believe
> at one time we included the gtk-doc.m4 file in the case it didn't exist,
> but that's a rather icky solution that can cause problems if you have a
> newer version of gtk-doc installed.
> 
the gimp's autogen.sh made sense enough to me.  it will take a little
doing on my part, however, to figure out the way xdt-autogen passes
configuration options on.  could be "ego deflating" or good brain candy
for me -- either outcome sounds fun and interesting to me.

> Besides, if you're running a sane distro (among which Debian should
> hopefully be), you should be able to install all that crap (yeah, I
> agree, too many dependencies) with a single command.
> 
the easy way (and yes, debian makes it easy) is not so often the right
way.  i think the fact that whatever gtk person or people who made this
decision cannot explain it to me is enough evidence of this.

it is a choice i ask for and look to hack into things.  it is almost
like someone wants to look pathetic and disruptive!

well, thanks.  you have been very helpful.  i am better at documenting
what i did to make things work than i am at being trusted to make sane
changes to everyones system.  not so good at documenting my failures
though :)

carol