Re: Build error in Devuan stable

[Alejandro Colomar]

Hi onf, Branden,

On Sun, Nov 24, 2024 at 11:43:57PM +0100, onf wrote:
> On Sun Nov 24, 2024 at 10:52 PM CET, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > I'm having a build error when trying to build groff HEAD in Devuan
> > stable.  ./bootstrap and ./configure succeed, and them make(1) fails.
> > Below is the failure.  Let me know if you need more details.
> >
> > [...]
> >   GEN      doc/groff.dvi
> > [...]
> > /usr/bin/texi2dvi: etex exited with bad status, quitting.
> > make: *** [Makefile:15737: doc/groff.dvi] Error 1
> 
> As the output shows, this is a problem with building the Texinfo manual
> rather than with building groff itself. Unfortunately the current build
> process makes the manual inseparable from the program itself, so that
> if you can't build the manual, the entire build fails... which doesn't
> make a lot of sense since it's written in Texinfo, not troff, so its
> build failing means nothing in terms of groff's functionality.
> 
> I recently suggested a patch which skips building the manual if makeinfo
> isn't present or is outdated.[1] You can easily modify it to disable
> building the manual even if it's present. Simply do this to the patch:
>   s/(groff_have_makeinfo=)yes/\1no/
> 
> and apply it. Re-running make should suffice according to the docs; if
> it doesn't, run the whole bootstrap > configure > make process again.

Thanks!  +1 to your proposal.

        Acked-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>

Branden, you may want to have a look at the Linux man-pages build
system.  I'm not proposing that you replace autotools with some
hand-written Makefiles, but the way the dependencies are laid out are
interesting.  You can run `make` (a.k.a., `make build`) which runs all
default targets.  In the man-pages project it only stamps the page date
and project version into each page.  In other projects of mine (liba2i),
it builds the library shared object (.so).

But then I allow building less than that with specialized `make build-*`
targets:

        $ make help
        To see a list of targets, run:
                $ make nothing -p \
                | grep '^\.PHONY:' \
                | tr ' ' '\n' \
                | grep -v '^\.PHONY:' \
                | sort;

        To see a list of variables, run:
                $ find GNUmakefile share/mk/configure -type f \
                | sort \
                | xargs grep '^[^[:space:]].*=' \
                | sed 's/=.*/=/' \
                | grep -v -e ':DEFAULT_.*=' -e ':MAKEFILE_.*INCLUDED :=';

        To see a list of dependencies (package/program), run:
                $ find share/mk/configure/build-depends -type f \
                | sed 's,share/mk/configure/build-depends/,,' \
                | sed 's,\.mk,,' \
                | sort;


        $  make nothing -p \
                | grep '^\.PHONY:' \
                | tr ' ' '\n' \
                | grep -v '^\.PHONY:' \
                | sort \
                | grep ^build;
        build
        build-all
        build-catman
        build-catman-eqn
        build-catman-grotty
        build-catman-troff
        build-catman-troff-man
        build-catman-troff-mdoc
        build-ex
        build-ex-cc
        build-ex-dir
        build-ex-ld
        build-ex-src
        build-fonts
        build-fonts-download
        build-fonts-tinos
        build-html
        build-html-post-grohtml
        build-html-troff
        build-html-troff-man
        build-html-troff-mdoc
        build-man
        build-man-man
        build-man-mdoc
        build-man-so
        build-pdf
        build-pdf-book
        build-pdf-pages
        build-pdf-pages-eqn
        build-pdf-pages-gropdf
        build-pdf-pages-troff
        build-pdf-pages-troff-man
        build-pdf-pages-troff-mdoc
        build-pre
        build-pre-preconv
        build-pre-tbl
        build-ps
        build-ps-eqn
        build-ps-grops
        build-ps-troff
        build-ps-troff-man
        build-ps-troff-mdoc

And have similar install-* targets:

        $ make nothing -p \
                | grep '^\.PHONY:' \
                | tr ' ' '\n' \
                | grep -v '^\.PHONY:' \
                | sort \
                | grep ^install;
        install
        install-all
        install-bin
        install-html
        install-man
        install-man1
        install-man2
        install-man2const
        install-man2type
        install-man3
        install-man3const
        install-man3head
        install-man3type
        install-man4
        install-man5
        install-man6
        install-man7
        install-man8
        install-manintro
        install-pdf
        install-pdf-book

This allows you to build parts of the project without needing to build
the entire project, for whatever reasons one may have.

In groff, I would propose at least separating into build-bin and
build-doc, and then do similarly for the install targets.  Also, please
provide a `make help` that documents whatever organization you come up
with (or in some README, or wherever you find appropriate).

Does that sound good to you?


Have a lovely day!
Alex

> ~ onf
> 
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2024-11/msg00165.html

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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