Re: Why is it _still_ so freaking hard to get info with images?

[John Mandereau]

[forgot to CC to list]
--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Mandereau <address@hidden>
Date: 2009/3/16
Subject: Re: Why is it _still_ so freaking hard to get info with images?
To: Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden>


Hi Jan,
2009/3/16 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <address@hidden>:
> Your point about README/INSTALL is more difficult to tackle.  While
> I agree it would be nice to have those file available at toplevel--
> just as they are in the distributed tarballs--it is a pain (not to
> say stupid) to have generated files in GIT.

It should be simple to trigger "make do-top-doc" and link generated
INSTALL and README to the root at the end of autogen.sh; having
these generated files is not a pain if we add them in .gitignore.  I'll get
a look as soon as I can bring my laptop to work...


> The problems with fixing a build system is that it is a major time sink
> without any obvious benefits, very hard to get right (for a big project
> like lilypond) and with a number of conflicting constraints (speed vs
> correctness, etc.) and it's a very personal thing, everyone wants
> something else, wants to use the build system they already know
> very well (from work or wherever), doesn't care so much about speed,
> or correctness, or cross-building or using yet another undocumented
> language or out of tree builds or building in other ide's or...  Unless
> maybe you use the full standard autotools suite, which *everyone* hates
> to work with.

>From the little experience I got by hacking LilyPond parts of the build system
dedicated to documentation and looking a little in autoconf stuff, I just fully
second this.

Best,
John