Re: [RFC suggestion] Generate manpage directly with Asciidoctor

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: May 11, 2021, 08:03 UTC
Message-ID: <609a3a5a7aa08_5d5d32088@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <YJogn8cUtSP/BAbJ@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

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> On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 11:27:54PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > Jeff King wrote:
> > > It does create a situation where people like Randall on NonStop might
> > > need to do part of their dev work on another, more mainstream platform.
> > > But I suspect that is already the case.
> > 
> > Or use distributed tarballs with already built documentation.
> 
> For users, yes. But the context above is about people who are
> contributing to Git, and writing their own new documentation. Presumably
> they'd like to build it to see the output.

I'm a developer, I've added 261 lines and removed 212 lines to the documentation, and I've very rarely built it. Why? Because it takes too long.

But you were talking about Randall, who I don't know what his role is, but my bet is that he is a packager. It's not the same thing. Randall has contributed only one patch to the Documentation, and it was to install pre-formatted documentation. Precisely what I thought he would be interested in.

In fact, the bulk of his contribution was to install-doc-quick.sh, which needs git-htmldocs and git-manpages. Two repositories I didn't even know existed. So that's yet another option for him.

Of course Randall can say if he sees himself as a developer.

Show 12 quoted lines

> > > That does make things a little less convenient; Debian stable, for
> > > instance, still has 1.5.8.
> > 
> > And it has git 2.20.1, released at the end of 2018.
> > 
> > I've never understood developers worried about how the bleeding edge
> > would build in ancient platforms, when ancient platforms don't care
> > about the bleeding edge.
> 
> Again, this is about developers. Are there people contributing new
> documentation to Git who are doing so on Debian stable, and would be
> inconvenienced by needing to upgrade their toolchain?

Developers don't need to create (or use) debian packages. They can simply do `gem install asciidoctor` and be done with it. Some may even create a docker container to install all the doc toolchain in order to avoid polluting their main environment.

I for one would start building the documentation more if all I needed is one dependency.

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> > > I'm unclear when support for python asciidoc goes away here. Is it part
> > > of step 6 (because it does not have another way of generating them)? Or
> > > does it live on forever as a non-default legacy system? I'd prefer not,
> > > but as long as we are clear about the primary target and leave it up to
> > > people interested in the legacy to do the compat fixes, that might be
> > > OK.
> > 
> > How about we leave the legacy system in place as an alternative, and
> > decide later what to do with it?
> 
> That's what I was asking.
> 
> Leaving it forever does mean supporting xmlto forever, which complicates
> the Makefile (and that support will bitrot if people are not actually
> building it).

Indeed. If and when it's clear the xmlto part has bitrotten, and people are happy with the asciidoc toolchain and output, then it can be obsoleted.

That would be my vote (I don't think there will be a strong need to main the xmlto parts).

It doesn't need to be decided today though.

-- 
Felipe Contreras