Re: meson documentation build open issues

On 03.11.23 19:19, Christoph Berg wrote:
>>>> You can control this with the "docs" option for meson, as of recently.
>>> I've been looking into switching the Debian PG 17 build to meson, but
>>> I'm running into several problems.
>>>
>>> * The docs are still not built by default, and -Ddocs=enabled doesn't
>>> change that
>> Maybe I am missing something - they aren't built by default in autoconf
>> either?
> True, but the documentation (and this thread) reads like it should. Or
> at least it should, when I explicitly say -Ddocs=enabled.
>
> What would also help is when the tail of the meson output had a list
> of features that are enabled. There's the list of "External libraries"
> which is quite helpful at figuring out what's still missing, but
> perhaps this could be extended:
>
> Features
> LLVM : YES (/usr/bin/llvm-config-16)
> DOCS : YES (html pdf texinfo)
>
> Atm it's hidden in the long initial blurb of "Checking for.." and the
> "NO" in there don't really stand out as much, since some of them are
> normal.

I don't feel like we have fully worked out how the docs options should
fit together.

With the make build system, there is a canonical sequence of

make world
make check-world
make install-world

that encompasses everything.

Now with meson to handle the documentation one needs to remember a
variety of additional targets. (There is a risk that once this gets
more widespread, more people will submit broken documentation.)

I would like to have some set of options that enables it so that the
standard documentation targets become part of "meson compile" and "meson
install".