Re: man2html

Hi Jan!

On 02/01/18 11:07, Jan Stary wrote:
> Hi Craig,
> 
>>> On Jan 1, 2018, at 6:40 PM, Jan Stary <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> I would like to remove man2htl from macports.
>>> I see that liirc (which you maintain) requires it
>>> as a build dependency. Why exactly is it required please?
> 
> On Jan 01 21:00:03, ctreleaven-/[email protected] wrote:
>> lirc provides extensive documentation in html format
>> and uses man2html to produce some of it.
> 
> it seems to produce the html manpages (the API html documentation
> is produced differently). For example, as there is irexec(1), i.e.
> /opt/local/share/man/man1/irexec.1.gz, there is also
> /opt/local/share/doc/lirc/lirc.org/html/irexec.html
> - but this is what it says (viewing with lynx):'

[bad html]

> That's not a html version of irexec(1), that's a failed run of man2html.
> Apparently, no-one hasn't looked at the html manpages; it doesn't work.

Strange thing is that by me (fedora 26, lirc devel branch) there is
nothing wrong with irexec.html. So it seems thatl your environment is
part of this. Fedora's man2html version is 1.6-18. What's yours?

> We have the original manpages in the first place;
> why produce a boken html version?

Because part of the build is to produce the  website, and the html
manpages is an integrated part of this. We don't really have the
manpower to rewrite all these docs :(

> Can we drop this entirely please?

So, not really...

> I am willing to do the work (with the intent
> of eventually removing man2html from the ports).

Isn't this basically a downstream packaging issue? From upstream
perspective: could you please file a bug, so we can handle it properly?
(bugs are easier to track)

Note that man2html is *not* distributed with lirc it's a build dependency.

IIRC, it's possible to build without it. If not, it shouldn't be that
hard to fix the autotools setup so it works. Looking at configure.ac the
mechanisms to handle a missing man2html is already in place. I doubt
it's heavily tested, but again IIRC it at least has worked at some
point. Perhaps this is the way to handle this problem?


Cheers!

--alec

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