[Gnucap-devel] Re: gEDA-dev: Gnucap docs build failure on FC5 (and other places)

[Stuart Brorson]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Dan McMahill wrote:
> Stuart Brorson wrote:
>> Al, group,
>> 
>> I am getting the next spin of the gEDA CD ready for release.  On FC5 I
>> have a problem:  If dvipdfm is installed, but Latex is not, I get this
>> error message:

(snip!)

>> I am not an autoconf/automake expert, but will happily submit
>> patches acheiving this.  But I was wondering if any of the development
>> gurus out there had some example code which implemented this scheme?
>> I looked at PCB, which does this, but I was flummoxed by its
>> complexity.  Therefore, if somebody could point to a different
>> open-source program using the GNU automake stuff which cleanly ships
>> .pdfs in the distro tarball, I would very much appreciate it.
>> Alternately, if the PCB devlopers could explain enough of their scheme
>> so that I could copy it, I would like that too.  Any and all pointers
>> appreciated!
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> Stuart
>
> I believe that gnucap should already do the right thing.  The problem is that 
> the latest snapshot tarball was not created with 'make dist' using the new 
> autoconf/automake build system but rather created with the old build system. 
> I believe your problems will go away once the gnucap tarballs start being 
> generated with 'make dist' or preferably 'make distcheck'.

Well, unfortunately they don't.  But thank you, Dan, and thank you DJ,
I belive I have a work-around.   Here it is, from my notes:

---------------- <rambling notes> -------------------------
If you do "make maintainer-clean", the .dvi files are killed.

Then if you have dvipdfm but don't have Latex on your system,
any "./configure && make" operation fails.

If the developer has both Latex and dvipdfm, he can do this to make a
non-failing gnucap distribution:

make maintiner-clean
./configure
make dist (this fails after making docs)
make distclean
rm -fR gnucap-2006-05-06
cd ..
tar -cf gnucap-2006-05-06.tar gnucap-2006-05-06

the resulting tarball is a good substitute for a "make dist" tarball.
---------------- </rambling notes> -------------------------

I have put the resulting tarball on my Install CD and it has just
passed the point of doing "configure" for Gnucap.  I believe I have a
work-around!

> If you want to work around it then generate the dvi file and add it to the 
> distribution or you could also build your own distfile with 'make dist' and 
> put that on the CD.  You'll need latex but the users won't.

Make dist fails on my machine.  It died after making the docs.  If you
want I can reproduce the failure and send a config.log file.

In any event, my hack procedure seems to work (knock wood). . . .

Stuart