[GNC-dev] Documentation update problems

[Geert Janssens]

Op vrijdag 21 september 2018 04:13:22 CEST schreef David Cousens:
> Geert
> 
> "I think a generic page for autotools based build and one for cmake based
> builds would be useful. We can even consider abandoning the autotools based
> page to save time. This should be accompanied with a page that explains how
> to
> set up the proper dependencies based on your platform. The Build
> instructions
> page itself would then become a very short recipe referring to these two or
> three pages. "
> 
> 
> These pages largely exist in some form in the breakouts from
> BuildUbuntu16.04
> so I will copy them back to the Build on Linux page.

Ok.

> The autotools build also
> applies to building the documentation so it could also be linked from there

I believe that's not completely accurate. The documentation build system is 
also autotools based, but as John pointed out somewhere recently the make 
targets are completely different.

For the application one would run "make" to build. For documentation this does 
nothing.

For the application the primary targets of interest are
- all (the default target if none is specified)
- check (to run our test suite)
- install (to install the application in the proper prefix)

For documentation on the other hand the primary targets of interest are
- html
- pdf
- epub
- mobi
- check (which will run xmllint on the docbook sources)
The "all" target (default when none is specified) will do nothing.


Additionally the current application build expects the user to run the make 
(or ninja) command in the top-level build directory. For the documentation the 
commands can be run in any sub directory to limit the which documentation is 
built.

So I'm not sure whether linking to the autotools instructions for the 
application from the build instructions for the documentation will keep things 
sufficiently clear.

Geert