Re: [pcre-dev] Creating a distribution

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Daniel Richard G. wrote:

> I fully agree with killing trailing whitespace, but keep in mind that with
> the source now in an SCM, this would be an edit that would have to be
> checked in.

Indeed.

> What if the Subversion repository were to have a pre-commit script that
> would check the files being committed for trailing whitespace, and reject
> the commit if present?

That is another possibility. I'd have to check whether any of the test
data files (which I do not detrail) have any significant trailing
whitespace

> I think that the scripts to generate the HTML files from the man pages
> should be a part of the distribution, so that the HTML can be updated
> without pulling stuff from SVN. We can define the HTML files to be
> "maintainer-generated", so that "make clean" won't delete them (you would
> have to do "make maintainer-clean"), yet the rules to generate them can be
> fully integrated with Automake.

OK, but the current Perl script that generates HTML is a local one that
I wrote; it knows about the format in which I write man pages, but it is
not a general "man-to-html" script. It's a while since I did it, and I'd
have to look to check, but I think there is some magic so that it gets
various cross-references right and turns them into HTML links.

This raises the more general question of what the distribution actually
is. I've always thought of it as a distribution for users, not for
maintainers, but it seems as though you and others think differently.

I put stuff into a maintain/ directory that I thought shouldn't be
distributed because is is for maintainers only; if we start to
distribute some of this, should it come out of that directory?

> "config.h" should not be present as a file in the tarball. I would call the
> file e.g. "config.h.manual", with the expectation that it would be renamed
> if needed.

By that argument, we should then also rename pcre.h as pcre.h.manual in
the tarball. What is the consensus on this? Please let's get it settled
so that I don't have to keep on editing README and NON-UNIX-USE.

Philip

--
Philip Hazel, University of Cambridge Computing Service.