Some Assistance Please

[David T.]

Geert,

See below.

> On Apr 26, 2017, at 5:54 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
> By doing so you may have implicitly configured your source directory resulting 
> in the errors below. As a rule of thumb, avoid running any "make" command in 
> your source tree. The only commands that make sense there are git commands to 
> manage your commits (including pushing and pulling from/to upstream) and "./
> autogen.sh" in the root level of your source tree.
> 
> "configure" on the other hand should always be called from within the root of 
> your build directory. From then on "make <whatever>" can be called from any 
> directory in your build tree.
> 
> And to avoid any confusion "from within the root of your build directory" 
> means you cd into your build directory and then invoke configure. As configure 
> itself is not in your build directory, but in your source directory, you'll 
> need to call it with its full path. This gives:
> cd ~/Development/GnuCash/build
> ~/Development/Gnucash/docs/configure
> 
>> When
>> I changed over to ~/Development/GnuCash/build/guide/C and entered “make
>> html” (per the wiki), I received an error:
>> 
>> configure: error: source directory already configured; run "make distclean"
>> there first
>> 
>> I went to the docs folder and entered “make distclean” and got some output.
>> I then returned to build/guide/C and tried again. I get the same error. No
>> combination of make commands seems to move the process along.
> 
> You may have to call make distclean directly in
> ~/Development/GnuCash/build/guide/C

> if that is where you accidentally ran configure from before. Note you will 
> only be able to run make distclean successfully once in each configured 
> directory. That command will throw away all filed that were automatically 
> generated by autogen.sh and configure (not your manual changes to the source 
> files though, which is good).
> 
> If you hesitate which directories you may have run configure in, you can 
> search for a file called config.log. Each directory that contains this file 
> was at some point in the past "configured" as the error message suggests. With 
> the exception of your true build directory in each of these directories you 
> can run make distclean once.

I attempted to use the above directions, without any success.

> 
> That's one approach to clean up, using the tools provided by make and friends 
> itself. Another approach would be to use git instead. Git knows which files 
> belong in your source tree and which ones are generated.
> 
> *** Important *** If you want to use the git way, first make sure *all* your 
> current changes are committed at least locally. That is all your changes 
> should have been git add'ed and git commit'ed. git status should only show you 
> untracked files for which you know you didn't edit/create them manually. 
> Anything that's not committed will be deleted.
> 
> From there on it's easy.
> Cd into your source directory
> run "git clean -fx"
> rerun "./autogen.sh"
> cd into your build directory
> run ~/Development/Gnucash/docs/configure
> cd to wherever in your build tree you want to run a make command
> execute the make command
> 

This set of directions worked.

> 
> I sympathize. Unfortunately I'm no longer in a position to be able to estimate 
> what works for general users as you call it. It seems this is also a variable 
> term. Some users like lots of context, others prefer a short list of commands. 
> What structure would you propose ? Are you willing to attempt a restructuring 
> of the page to something you see better fit ? Don't worry if some of the info 
> your would write there is not completely correct. We can adjust this as we 
> continue. I just would love to find a structure that works well for a wide 
> audience first.

I am somewhat hesitant to take this on; my experience editing Gnucash wiki pages is decidedly negative. When last I engaged in the editorial process on this particular page, my perspective was not considered relevant to the focus of the page. And recently, changes I made to the Glossary were determined to be incorrect, and the bulk of them removed altogether. I am not interested in putting in the effort of editing a complex wiki document only to have that work discarded.

David

> 
> Regards,
> 
> Geert