Re: Automake (was Re: testing things in the groff project?)

[Dave Kemper]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 7:50 PM G. Branden Robinson
<g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 2024-11-22T01:24:20+0100, onf wrote:
> > The result is that it seems impossible to build groff without
> > installing texinfo despite the program itself not depending on it in
> > any way, which is completely absurd.
>
> Some people find documentation important, even an essential aspect of a
> software system.  I'm one of them.

One can find documentation essential but also realize it doesn't have
to live on every system that one might want to build the software
itself on.  We've had these things called "networks" for a couple
years now that free us of the necessity of having separate copies of
documentation everywhere.

Sure, there's plenty to be said for having locally available
documentation that's guaranteed to reflect the version of the software
on that machine.  But there's also plenty to be said for allowing
groff to be installed on tiny systems using a bare minimum of
prerequisite packages.