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

[Russell Shaw]

Stuart Brorson wrote:
> Al, group,
>
> I am getting the next spin of the gEDA CD ready for release.  On FC5 I
> have a problem:  If dvipdfm is installed, but Latex is not, I get this
> error message:...

Latex is required to get a Tex DVI file.

http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_mono/automake.html#Documentation

...
> checking for latex... notfound
> checking for main in -ltermcap... yes
>
> (etc.)
> --------------- <configure spew> --------------
>
>
> Anyway, IMO we shouldn't require users to build .pdf files in their
> distributions.  Pdfs should just come with the distribution.  IMO a
> .pdf file is a "make dist" target, requiring the developer to have the
> right tools installed, not the user.

If every package had pdf files already built, it would increase bandwidth
usage a large amount (eg, from Debian repositories).

> The reason I am bleating like this is that I want to modify the gnucap
> automake stuff so that the .pdfs are "make dist" targets, and the
> distributions have .pdfs (any anything generated from Latex) already
> built in.   That way I can circumvent all user config problems when
> they try to build the gEDA Suite.
>
> I am not an autoconf/automake expert, but will happily submit
> patches acheiving this.  But I was wondering if any of the development
> gurus out there had some example code which implemented this scheme?
> I looked at PCB, which does this, but I was flummoxed by its
> complexity.  Therefore, if somebody could point to a different
> open-source program using the GNU automake stuff which cleanly ships
> .pdfs in the distro tarball, I would very much appreciate it.
> Alternately, if the PCB devlopers could explain enough of their scheme
> so that I could copy it, I would like that too.  Any and all pointers
> appreciated!