Re: [pcre-dev] Creating a distribution

On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Craig Silverstein wrote:

> I'd say anything that's simple enough to put into the actual
> distribution without too much trouble, should do so. The idea is that
> if people download the distribution and make local changes, it would
> be nice to make it as easy as possible for them to do that properly.
> So if I download pcre and want to change the docs to add some
> site-specific info, it would be nice if make could update the html
> docs for me automatically.

Point taken, but see my comment in a previous message.

> For things like making the ucptable, where the input isn't part of the
> distribution, it makes less sense to include it in the distribution
> directly.

Indeed.

> Then again, my bias is to always give the person downloading the
> .tar.gz, as much info as possible. That's why I stuck every text file
> you could think of into the doc directory. I figure it can't hurt,
> and may well help.
>
> But I don't have strong feelings. If you guys want to leave stuff out
> of that dir, fine by me.

I don't want to leave anything out of the doc directory. I just don't
want to install some of them into /usr/local/share/doc/pcre/ (or
wherever).

> Enh, I'm not a big fan. The lcilent should either use config.h, in
> which case they can edit it to their heart's content, or they should
> not use config.h, in which case they can just specify everything they
> care about on the commandline. This mixing-and-matching is, I think,
> asking for trouble.

There certainly shouldn't be any mixing and matching. All I want to
achieve is some version of pre-built pcre.h and config.h in the
distribution for the benefit of those who cannot use "configure".

> I disagree with the other comment, btw, that we should rename config.h
> to config.h.manual. I'd like it if things had a chance of Just
> Working out of the box, even for people who can't run ./configure.
>
> That suggests, I think, that the default config.h we put in the
> distro, in addition to being really well commented, should have
> reasonable defaults for, say, a windows system. :-)

That's hard for me to generate. :-)

Philip

--
Philip Hazel, University of Cambridge Computing Service.