Re: Build utilities?

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 07:49 +0000, Joachim Noreiko wrote:
> --- Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com> wrote:
> 
> > Shaun wrote on bugzilla...
> > 
> > > Oh, I meant to say something else too.  I've said
> > it
> > before, but I'm going to
> > keep saying it over and over and over until
> > everybody
> > knows not to run xmllint
> > manually.  Our wonderful build utilities do the
> > proper
> > xmlling command when you
> > do 'make check'.  So, you know, spread the word.
> > 
> > Me no coder. Me doc writer.
> > What be build utility?
> > Anything with word 'make' is scary and might blow up
> > my computer. Ug. (Bangs with stick and rock.)
> > 
> 
> Seriously guys -- I wasn't kidding.
> How does this work?
> I tried 'make check' in all the folders I thought
> might be relevant and I got the same error message.

With gnome-doc-utils, there are no Makefiles in the
language directories.  So for the User Guide, every
time I say to use make, you'll do it in

gnome-user-docs/gnome2-user-guide

To have a Makefile, will have had to run automake,
autoconf, and friends.  Luckily, we have a script
called autogen.sh in the top-level directory of
each module that does all this.  Generally, it's
going to call gnome-autogen with some parameters.
To get that, you need to install the gnome-common
module from CVS.

You do not need make to write the documentation,
unless some of the documentation is generated from
other sources (rare for user help).  You can just
write your DocBook and view it in Yelp.

What I would like is to have a script that can do
all these nice things without make, and without
having to run autogen.  The script would get all
the information it needs from the Makefile.am,
which is a static file that sits in CVS.

> I haven't had very good experiences with make.
> I briefly tried joining the gimp-web team last year,
> and I found out I had to run a make script after EVERY
> edit to the HTML just to see the changes in a browser.
> When I pointed out that this completely broke normal
> workflow for web work (edit, save, reload in browser,
> repeat LOTS), they pretty much told me to get lost.
> (I haven't checked, but I think gnome web suffers from
> the same design flaw, which might explain why it's
> getting no attention from web page writers.)

I've been pushing for a while to get a single CMS
in place to handle as much of the Gnome web site
as possible.  But I can't commit my time to that.
The GDP keeps me busy enough.

--
Shaun