Hi Branden, > Date: 2026-08-23 09:16:22-0500 > From: "G. Branden Robinson" > > Hi Alex, > > At 2026-08-23T15:55:29+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > > From: "G. Branden Robinson" > > > > Do you know what's wrong? > > > > > > More or less. It turns out to be damned hard to balance the > > > requirements of (1) Automake maintainer mode; (2) building from Git > > > repository checkouts; and (3) building from distribution archives. > > > Bruno Haible has been helpful in finding scenarios that don't work. > > > > > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-08/msg00039.html > > > > Hmmmm, now it rings a bell. bootstrap said something about configure > > with maintainer mode, but I ignored that, since I had never used > > maintainer mode. > > Right. I introduced that very recently during the RCs for 1.25.0, > because it seemed necessary. But as shown, Bruno has proposed patches > ripping it back out. > > I'm pretty frustrated with Automake's lack of explicit support for > building from Git working copies. Or maybe it's brilliantly documented > somewhere I haven't seen yet... I dislike autotools for that and other reasons. For groff(1), writing a portable hand-written Makefile might be too hard to write. But for the man-pages, I love the hand-written Makefile we have. I'm still waiting for GNU Make to make a new release, and then be able to get rid of the mandatory -R, but other than that, it works quite nicely. [...] > I do _not_ get such errors. Shell session attached. > > ...but I'm building _from the release candidate archive_, as I advised > you to do. Yup; I don't like using tarballs. It's much easier to just check out git HEAD. :) > > > Build finished successfully for me in about 60 seconds. > > > > Out of curiosity, where did you get those timestamps from? Does your > > history file store them? > > Yes. That's simply the output of Bash's "history" built-in. I chopped > off the command numbers and removed irrelevancies like "ls". Oh, I don't have that! $ history | tail -n1 1997 history | tail -n1 After checking `help history`, I now realize it has a HISTTIMEFORMAT variable for doing that. I've added it now to my bashrc: alx@devuan:~/src/alx/config/main$ git show -U0 commit 9b64c78f797fc3abab83148b24143402a5d2a839 (HEAD -> main) Author: Alejandro Colomar Date: 2026-08-23 16:53:59 +0200 bash: HISTTIMEFORMAT: Add variable Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar diff --git a/etc/bash.bashrc b/etc/bash.bashrc index af974d211e14..f2f7772c8e51 100644 --- a/etc/bash.bashrc +++ b/etc/bash.bashrc @@ -2,0 +3 @@ export GPG_TTY="$(tty)"; +export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%F %T%z "; I've been wanting that for a long long time! It's good to know it exists. :) > > Using groff from git HEAD, I see the list as this: > > > > $ cat ls.man > > .TH a s d f > > .SH test > > foo > > .LS > > .IP \[bu] 3 > > bar > > .IP \[bu] > > baz > > .LS > > .P > > qwe > > $ /opt/local/gnu/groff/20260823_master/bin/groff -man -Tutf8 ./ls.man > > a(s) a(s) > > > > test > > foo > > > > • bar > > > > • baz > > > > qwe > > > > f d a(s) > > > > Is this intended? I thought it would imply PD 0. > > Yes, it's intended. If you want the list compact, you have to say so. > > Also, you need to say what kind of list you're presenting. > > groff_man(7): > .LS type [compactness [indentation]] > (since groff 1.25) Start (or open) a list. type is one of > “definition”, “enumerated”, or “itemized”. compactness is a > Boolean value directing suppression of inter‐paragraph > spacing between list items. indentation specifies an > indentation amount for the body of each list item; it is > then unnecessary to specify this argument to the list item > macros. Use IP with a mark argument to represent an > itemized or enumerated list item, and TP for a definition > list item. Use IP without arguments to associate successive > paragraphs with an existing list item; to these, inter‐ > paragraph spacing applies even in compact lists. > > .LE (since groff 1.25) End (or close) the most recent open list. > > > .LS > > Say instead: > > .LS itemized 1 Oh, yeah, I forgot to RTFM. :-) Here's an interesting thing (it might be okay, just noting it): diff --git i/man/man5/tunables.conf.5 w/man/man5/tunables.conf.5 index 91bb6b81cb85..835c409eb074 100644 --- i/man/man5/tunables.conf.5 +++ w/man/man5/tunables.conf.5 @@ -89,9 +89,10 @@ .SS Filters Filters limit the tunables following it. The effects of a filter are terminated by any of the following: +.P +.LS itemized 1 .IP \[bu] 3 The end of the file. -.PD 0 .IP \[bu] The end of an included file. .IP \[bu] @@ -100,7 +101,7 @@ .SS Filters directive. .IP \[bu] A new (possibly empty) filter. -.PD +.LE .P The syntax is: .P I had to add that P paragraph so that there's a blank before the list. That's a bit unusual, since that would technically be an empty paragraph; or maybe we can consider that paragraph to be the entire list, but that's unusual in man(7). That said, I'm fine with that. What do you think? Cheers, Alex --