avoiding build dependency on docbook, etc. in new port

[Greg Larkin]

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Charlie Kester wrote:
> I'm porting some software that has a build dependency on docbook2man in
> order to generate its manpages from .docbook files.
> 
> Testing the port in tinderbox takes a long time, most of it because of
> the need to build the docbook infrastructure.  It seems a shame to use
> all that CPU time and install all those packages just to get ready to
> convert some manpages.
> What's the preferred approach in cases like this?  Should I keep the
> build dependency on docbook2man et al, or should I put pregenerated
> copies of the manpages in the files directory of the port?

Hi Charlie,

I feel your pain! I don't think there's any problem pre-generating the
man page and keeping it in the port's files/ directory.

On the other hand, I recently went through this experience and went a
different route.  YMMV!

I took over maintainership for security/logcheck a while back, and it
used docbook2man to create its one (!) man page.  After a while, I got
some requests to strip out that dependency.  A user was kind enough to
point me to docbook2X: http://docbook2x.sourceforge.net/

This is a much lighter-weight tool for converting docbook to manual
pages, among other functions.  I eventually added it to the ports tree
and updated the logcheck port to use it.

This worked well for me, but I started getting reports of mysterious
build failures related to the docbook->man conversion process:
http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD/questions/2009-05/msg01466.html

Since I couldn't figure out how to reproduce the problem here, a kind
user granted me remote access to a machine that exhibited the problem.
I finally figured out that docbook2x conflicts with docbook-4.1 and
refuses to work correctly.

The logcheck port now does some checks to determine which docbook->man
conversion tool to use, instead of blindly installing docbook2x:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/security/logcheck/Makefile

Cheers,
Greg
- --
Greg Larkin

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