Re: Doc build hanging (with memory leak?)

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 12/05/12 14:29, James wrote:
> Assuming you are building from current master then make doc does
> compile as all new checkins go to staging tree first and sit there
> while a script runs (as it happens on my computer) that compiles
> staging through all the tests and if it passes them all (and that
> includes a make doc) it merges the staging branch to master.

Yea, it built fine in the end once dblatex was installed.  It was just scary 
having an initial command issued by make which just sat there for 10+ minutes 
doing nothing while the memory usage went up and up.  Completely different to 
what I'd experienced with earlier builds of the docs.

A small word to this effect might be a nice addition to the contributor guide 
(I'll make a patch if you like).

> My only advice having built docs and gone through all the pain of a
> non-programmer building doc is to use an out of tree build

Yes, I followed that advice from the guide.  Is it a recent addition?  I don't 
remember it from the last time I looked at the guide, which was probably 6+ 
months back.

> I've found it makes this so much more easier especially when you have
> a slower machine where make doc can take an age.

On my quad-core i7 it took about 35 minutes in total to build doc-stage-1, the 
first 10-12 minutes of which were the seeming "hang" I reported.  I remember it 
used to take much, much, much longer on the machine I had 6 months back, but 
there was plenty flashing past in the terminal window to make it clear something 
was happening!

If I understand right, that first documentation build command is making all the 
PNG, PS and PDF files for LP snippets -- right? -- which if my estimation is 
correct are a bit over 10,000 in number.  So no wonder it takes so long.

Thanks to all for your advice and explanations. :-)

     -- Joe