From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from dan.rpsys.net ([93.97.175.187]) by linuxtogo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R9FLr-0008Ie-CR for openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:04:31 +0200 Received: from localhost (dan.rpsys.net [127.0.0.1]) by dan.rpsys.net (8.14.2/8.14.2/Debian-2build1) with ESMTP id p8TC5QUr024455 for ; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:05:26 +0100 X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at dan.rpsys.net Received: from dan.rpsys.net ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (dan.rpsys.net [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id pNwx-+3I3jFA for ; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:05:26 +0100 (BST) Received: from [192.168.1.40] (tim [93.97.173.237]) (authenticated bits=0) by dan.rpsys.net (8.14.2/8.14.2/Debian-2build1) with ESMTP id p8TC5JJC024445 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT) for ; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:05:22 +0100 From: Richard Purdie To: openembedded-core Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:58:54 +0100 X-Mailer: Evolution 3.1.91- Message-ID: <1317297541.12332.85.camel@ted> Mime-Version: 1.0 Subject: help2man X-BeenThere: openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.11 Precedence: list Reply-To: Patches and discussions about the oe-core layer List-Id: Patches and discussions about the oe-core layer List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:04:31 -0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The more I look at and think about help2man, the more it looks like something we just shouldn't need/use. In summary, it runs a binary and captures its --help output. This rules it out from being useful in most cross compiling scenarios, i.e. all target packages. In the -native/-cross cases, we don't really care about man pages. I'm therefore thinking we should really just drop the dependency and symlink help2man to /bin/false. The missing script in autotools should then just silently touch the man page files instead of regenerating them. I tried to figure out which recipes actually use help2man: $ grep HELP2MAN * -r --exclude=Makefile.in 2> /dev/null | grep -v missing and against a core-image-sato this gave: libtool libtasn1 gettext automake autoconf flex bison m4 which isn't that many recipes to go and beat up manually if necessary. It certainly doesn't warrant a global include in autotools.bbclass IMO. Cheers, Richard