Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] DEFAULT_DOC_TARGET

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jan 3, 2013, 20:32 UTC
Message-ID: <20130103203222.GB4632@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <1357239920-2201-1-git-send-email-gitster@pobox.com>

On Thu, Jan 03, 2013 at 11:05:18AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> This allows things like:
> 
>   $ DEFAULT_DOC_TARGET=html make doc
>   $ DEFAULT_DOC_INSTALL_TARGET=html make install-doc
> 
> on a platform that does not have manpage viewer.  Which is not very
> useful, given that you can already say
> 
>   $ make install-html
> 
> on such a platform, and these install-$format targets will not go
> away.

I think the usefulness is that it can be set by default for a particular uname, so people on Windows can just type "make install-doc" without having to care about setting anything (though to be honest, I do not even know what they build by default; maybe they do build manpages). Except that in the original thread:

>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/207193/focus=207201

it became clear that to do that we would also want to hoist the uname automagic defaults into their own file that could be read from Documentation/Makefile.

Show 8 quoted lines

> The real motivation behind this was to let me say:
> 
>   $ git checkout $some_old_fork_point
>   $ DEFAULT_DOC_TARGET=git-push.1 make doc
> 
> while updating the sources to the documentation for the maintainance
> track, without having to format everything else that is different
> between the old fork point and the primary branch I usually work on.

I still don't see how this is any advantage over:

  make -C Documentation git-push.1

> The first one was discussed some time ago on the list and all the
> fixes mentioned on the thread already squashed in.  The second one
> is merely for completeness.

I wonder...do we really need DEFAULT_DOC_INSTALL_TARGET? Why isn't it the same as DEFAULT_DOC_TARGET? I realize that right now we build html and manpages by default, but only install man. But then why do we bother building html then?

-Peff