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Fellow developers, |
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I would like you to answer three questions, without looking at some |
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cheatsheet: |
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a. what does dohtml do, exactly? |
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b. what are the default file suffixes installed by dohtml? |
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c. what are the options accepted by dohtml? what do they do? |
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I doubt that most of the developers can answer those questions. Long |
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story short, dohtml is a terribly overcomplex, confusing function that |
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shouldn't really live in its current form. |
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Bug #520546 gives some insight and numbers on the issues with dohtml |
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and the scope of it. Most importantly: |
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1. Many ebuilds use it as some kind of 'docinto html; dodoc -r ...' |
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without even knowing that it does filtering by suffix. Some ebuilds |
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fail to install some of the files because of that... |
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2. The default suffix list will never fit everyone. Most people don't |
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have an idea what's there, bugs asking to change it will keep |
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happening, and requests for even more features [2,3]. |
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3. The number of options exceeds any other PM command. Some of them are |
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not used even once, some of them are used scarcely. Having so many |
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options only increases confusion and makes reading ebuilds harder. |
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4. By default, dohtml installs into $docdir/html. However, once docinto |
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is used, it installs to whatever directory was specified there (without |
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html subdir). One of the most confusing ideas ever invented. |
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5. dohtml has pretty powerful filtering. doins doesn't have any. This |
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is really upside-down that HTML documentation install command is more |
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powerful than generic file install command... |
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We've (me and ulm) have come up with the following ideas: |
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1. make HTML_DOCS in EAPI6 use plain 'docinto html; dodoc -r ...' |
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instead of dohtml, |
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2. possibly remove dohtml from EAPI6 completely, |
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3. ulm wants to reintroduce dohtml in an eclass for people who want to |
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use it. I'd rather cover it with warnings signs and tell people not to |
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touch it. IMHO a better replacement is the plain 'docinto html; dodoc |
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-r ...', possibly with some extra filtering applied before or after |
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install. |
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What do you think? |
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[1]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=520546 |
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[2]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=423245 |
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[3]:https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=263808 |
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|
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-- |
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Best regards, |
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Michał Górny |
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