Re: Automake bug #516 -- and more

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Peter,

* Peter Breitenlohner wrote on Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 10:28:28AM CET:
[...]
> My frustration was mostly due to the fact that I never got any reaction. I
> think I could have provided a ChangeLog entry and a test, if asked for it.

And lack of communication on my side certainly didn't help.

> I recently stumbled (once again) at two other manpage related automake
> problems, where I'd like to try for solutions provided there is a realistic
> chance that such solutions would be included in a future automake release.

> The problems are these:
>
> (1) In some cases it is completely inadequate to apply the program name
> transform to manpage names. E.g., in the man-db package there is manpath.1
> describing the manpath command (should be transformed), and manpath.5
> describing the format of the manpath configuration file (should certainly
> not be transformed).

Yes that is a problem.  Your example shows that even a suitably detailed
transform script won't help if two manpages differ only in their
extension.

> Maybe that could be taken care of by something like notransform_MAN_MANS
> (needs a better name).

notrans_man_MANS sounds good to me.

> Moreover, renaming "manpath"=>"xmanpath" and  "manpath.1"=>"xmanpath.1"
> without changing the manpage contents is sort of strange.

Well, isn't that in the realm of the rules generating manpath.1?
Not that I say it's nice, but I don't either think Automake can
just blindly do some transformation on the contents it would see fit.

> (2) There are packages with translated manpages -- good. But automake
> provides no way to supress their installation or to install them for a
> subset of the available languages -- not good.
>
> At the moment all available translated manpages are installed
> unconditionally (under the assumption that the packaging system of a
> distribution takes care of this?). I think something analogous to
> --disable-nls and/or LINGUAS=xxx for translated manpages is very desirable.

Colin submitted this:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2007-10/msg00015.html>

but I haven't had time to think about it.  The biggest problem I see is
how to define suitable interfaces (LINGUAS is already used by gettext,
shouldn't stomp on that).  Suggestions welcome.

Cheers,
Ralf