Re: [Groff] Tiny make patch: avoid Netpbm dependency

[Werner LEMBERG]

>>> Instead, you might contribute a patch to implement a
>>> `--without-doc' configure switch that completely disables the
>>> generation of documentation files. :-)
> 
> Really?

Yes.

> Why would somebody ever want to build a piece of software without
> the documentation belonging to it?

To be able to build binaries from the git on platforms that don't have
the necessary tools.  Admittedly, for groff this is probably overkill,
since binaries for netpbm are available, but for other packages this
can be quite useful.  For example, my ttfautohint project previously
needed a small filter for Pandoc.  Pandoc is written in Haskell, and
this filter had to be in Haskell, too.  Even if there was a Pandoc
binary for Windows, I needed a complete Haskell environment to compile
this tiny filter – more than 200 MByte package stuff to produce a
20kByte executable (if linked dynamically)...

Of course, a `--without-doc' option shouldn't affect man pages, which
are generated by simple sed commands.


    Werner