Re: asciidoc, was Re: Chicken/egg problem building from a 'git clone'

>>>>> However while toolchain needed to produce documentation (asciidoc +
>>>>> xmlto) isn't, I think, something very common, in my opinion autoconf is
>>>>> something that is present on systems containing other build tools
>>>>> required to build git from sources.  So 'configure' branch is not, I
>>>>> think, as necessary as 'html' and 'man' branches; additionally 'html'
>>>>> branch (or the repository used to build documentation, or the byproduct
>>>>> of building documentation) is used to generate on-line docs for git.
>>>>
>>>> Plus, keep in mind that autoconf support is only an afterthought in Git;
>>>> Just running "make" is supposed to work.  If it does not, patches are
>>>> certainly welcome, I think.
>>>
>>> Well now that you mention it.. :-)
>>>
>>> It doesn't check for the existance of asciidoc, but blindly assumes it
>>> exists.  And even if you do have asciidoc, there's a good chance that
>>> you have the wrong version.   The INSTALL file says that asciidoc
>>> requires 8.2.7 but most distros (debian, ubuntu.  probably other) have
>>> 8.2.6.

>>> If you compile the docs with the wrong asciidoc version, there is no
>>> warning or error at all.  It just builds incorrect man pages.
>>
>> Frankly, I was talking about "make".  I never needed asciidoc there.
>>
>> Besides, if it is really an itch of yours, maybe you can come up with a
>> patch checking for a correct asciidoc version?  Only if asciidoc would be
>> needed at all, of course.
> 
> Yep.  I've been looking at it for the last half hour, but configure.ac
> syntax defeats me :-D   (I figured getting the check into configure.ac
> would be a good first start)