[virt-tools-list] [PATCH virt-viewer] build-sys: man Makefile.am misc improvements

[Eric Blake]

On 04/03/2014 07:37 AM, Marc-André Lureau wrote:

>>> -DISTCLEANFILES = $(man_MANS)
>>> +CLEANFILES = $(man_MANS)
>>
>> Moving it to CLEANFILES now puts the burden on ALL users to have pod2man
>> installed before attempting to use the tarball.  Are you sure you want
>> to go that direction?
> 
> The man files are not in the dist, so it is needed anyway afaik

Libvirt has made efforts to require pod2man for anyone running 'make
dist' but to then ship the generated files as part of the tarball so
that ordinary users can build libvirt without needing pod2man or perl
installed.  I'm perfectly fine if you don't want to jump through those
hoops and instead decide that the virt tools tarball should just blindly
require additional non-default tools for all clients of the tarball; but
if that's the case, it might be worth adding a configure check for the
tool existence and error out up front if it is missing.

So this is neither an ack nor a nack, so much as food for thought so
that more active contributors to the project can contemplate where to
draw the balancing line between ease of use for end user (minimal
toolset for building a tarball, where anything complex is shipped
pregenerated and 'make clean' doesn't nuke it) vs. ease of use for the
developer (require a larger toolset for the end user, but then you don't
have to code around it and don't have to futz around with how to make
autotools ship pregenerated files for just the 'make dist' people).


-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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