Re: libidn-1.33 fails to build library when some doc tools are missing

[Tim Rühsen]

On 01/05/2018 12:45 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> I'm trying to build libidn to use with Wget. As far as I know Wget
> does not require man pages. Wget will build just fine without them.
> 
> Building libidn-1.33 results in:
> 
> make[4]: Entering directory '/home/scripts/libidn-1.33/doc'
> /bin/bash /home/scripts/libidn-1.33/build-aux/missing help2man \
>         --name="Internationalized Domain Names command line tool" \
>         --output=idn.1 ../src/idn
> /home/scripts/libidn-1.33/build-aux/missing: line 81: help2man:
> command not found
> WARNING: 'help2man' is missing on your system.
>          You should only need it if you modified a dependency of a man page.
>          You may want to install the GNU Help2man package:
>          <http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/>
> Makefile:2209: recipe for target 'idn.1' failed
> 
> Perhaps it would be a good idea to to avoid docs when tools are not present.

Thanks, but that seems to be a bad idea. As the text says
"You should only need it if you modified a dependency of a man page."

So if you are 'developer', you just install all dependencies.
Just continuing is bad for all (package) maintainers as they might fell
over half-baken packages/installations much later (e.g. when users
complain).

If you are 'user' (unpack tarball, ./configure, make, make install), you
shouldn't need help2man since you don't start editing files that require
a (developer) rebuild. That's one of the ideas of a tarball.

Regards, Tim

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