Re: disabling man pages completely ?

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 4:40 PM, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Nov 2008, Mike Frysinger wrote:
>> ive looked through the build system and i dont think there is a simple
>> way to disable man pages altogether ?  i think a new option to
>> configure would be appropriate:
>> --with-manpage-format=none
>> or something similar
>>
>> what do you think ?
>
> There are separate makefile rules for installing manpages, libs, data and
> programs.
>
> Anyway - I use the separate rules all the time, since I build several
> flavors of the libraries.

yes, but people do `make install` to install things.  they dont read
every package's makefile out there to figure out what sub-targets
exactly are needed in order to get a working system.  especially
because not every package out there does things strictly according to
automake rules, or they hook only the main install target rather than
a specific install target.

since configure options are the standard way to customize build/run
behavior, it flows naturally for said option to be there ...

> (I've considered installing the test-programs too, but since they shouldn't
> be in the normal bin-directory, haven't thought much beyond _that_).

sometimes i want to install test binaries to verify things work.  but
atm i have a makefile wrapper to manually install a bunch of tests.
not that i'm advocating building/installing of these by default ...
-mike