Re: asciidoc, was Re: Chicken/egg problem building from a 'git clone'

[John Tapsell <johnflux@gmail.com>]

2009/3/6 Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 6 Mar 2009, John Tapsell wrote:
>
>> 2009/3/6 Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>:
>>
>> > On Fri, 6 Mar 2009, Jakub Narebski wrote:
>> >
>> >> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>> >> > On Thu, Mar 05, 2009 at 01:38:27PM +0100, Matthieu Moy wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >>>> * we have lots other files in git.git that are autogenerated (the
>> >> >>>> documentation files, for example)
>> >> >>>
>> >> >>> I'm not aware of any auto-generated files that are checked in. Can you
>> >> >>> give an example?
>> >> >>
>> >> >> man pages and html docs are commited, but in a separate branch. IOW,
>> >> >> Junio abuses Git as a distribution mechanism, but keeps it totally
>> >> >> separate from the actual sources.
>> >> >
>> >> > OK, true; but that is a totally different mechanism, unless the proposal
>> >> > is to autobuild a "this would be the release tarball" branch similar to
>> >> > html and man branches.
>> >>
>> >> I thnk the proposal was to have 'configure' branch with configure
>> >> script built, similar to how 'html' and 'man' branches have built
>> >> documentation in HTML and manpages format.
>> >>
>> >> However while toolchain needed to produce documentation (asciidoc +
>> >> xmlto) isn't, I think, something very common, in my opinion autoconf is
>> >> something that is present on systems containing other build tools
>> >> required to build git from sources.  So 'configure' branch is not, I
>> >> think, as necessary as 'html' and 'man' branches; additionally 'html'
>> >> branch (or the repository used to build documentation, or the byproduct
>> >> of building documentation) is used to generate on-line docs for git.
>> >
>> > Plus, keep in mind that autoconf support is only an afterthought in Git;
>> > Just running "make" is supposed to work.  If it does not, patches are
>> > certainly welcome, I think.
>>
>> Well now that you mention it.. :-)
>>
>> It doesn't check for the existance of asciidoc, but blindly assumes it
>> exists.  And even if you do have asciidoc, there's a good chance that
>> you have the wrong version.   The INSTALL file says that asciidoc
>> requires 8.2.7 but most distros (debian, ubuntu.  probably other) have
>> 8.2.6.
>> If you compile the docs with the wrong asciidoc version, there is no
>> warning or error at all.  It just builds incorrect man pages.
>
> Frankly, I was talking about "make".  I never needed asciidoc there.
>
> Besides, if it is really an itch of yours, maybe you can come up with a
> patch checking for a correct asciidoc version?  Only if asciidoc would be
> needed at all, of course.

Yep.  I've been looking at it for the last half hour, but configure.ac
syntax defeats me :-D   (I figured getting the check into configure.ac
 would be a good first start)