Re: GZIPing docs

[Ralf Corsepius]

Am Sam, 2002-07-06 um 00.52 schrieb Tom Tromey:
> >>>>> "John" == John Poltorak <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> John> I had a look at a Slackware build script, and found the gzip'ing
> John> done there, but it seems to be a natural extension to 'make
> John> install'...
> 
> John> Wonder if there is any way to incorporate it.
>  
> I wouldn't mind an automake patch to do this.
> Is there a tradeoff?
Yes, it could break existing rpm.specs or some (broken) versions of rpm,
which do expect to find manpages uncompressed.

> Does it make sense to just always gzip the
> installed info pages? 
No, there exist systems which do not have gzip'ed manpages (eg. older RH
Linux-systems) nor are able to handle them (Commercial *nixes). 

> How much size difference does it make for a typical system?
Not much for an individual package, but MBs for a full system
installation. 

So if automake wants to compress/gzip/bzip man-pages, it, IMHO, should
treat this as a conditional host-system feature: 
Check if this system wants compress/gzip'ed/bzip'ed man-pages and
compress/gzip/bzip them then. Compressing/gzip'ing/bzip'ing man-pages in
general would be fault, IMHO.

However, additional complications would arise for cross-building (esp.
build!=host + host==target), as the characteristics of the host system
would not be known is such cases.

Ralf