Re: [gentoo-dev] man pages: build or copy?

[Dirkjan Ochtman]

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 3:54 PM, Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> wrote:
> I've created an ebuild for net-misc/zerotier [1]. This has a BDEP on
> app-text/ronn, the build system uses it to create the man pages. The
> trouble is that ronn is a Ruby program and pulls in a shedload of
> dependencies, just to install man pages.
>
> It seems to me to make more sense to put pre-built man pages in
> ${FILESDIR}/${PV} and copy them with doman. Is this considered the
> correct or acceptable way to deal with this?

In dev-libs/nanomsg, I've hidden building the docs behind the "doc"
USE flag. nanomsg builds it docs with AsciiDoc, which also pulls in
ruby and a bunch of stuff. Personally, I don't care that much about
the ruby packages, but on my servers, I don't generally even need ruby
itself, so I'd rather not install it. Since this grants the user the
choice of how to use your package, it seems in line with Gentoo's
principles.

Cheers,

Dirkjan