Re: [PATCH] build: graceful degradation in man pages generation if perl is lacking

[Pádraig Brady]

On 09/12/2012 08:48 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:

> In our situation, the best and simplest way to implement a graceful
> degradation it to keep the correct dependencies for man pages (that
> is, "man/ls.1: src/ls"), and if perl is not present, just generate
> dummy man pages reporting that built-time issue and redirecting the
> user back to either the info documentation or the '--help' output.
>
> As a consequence of this change, we also stop distributing man pages,
> since they would be anyway unconditionally rebuilt

I'm not sure I like this.
It would mean for example that distro builders would have to tweak
their packages to include perl in their buildroots for one thing.

Why can't the graceful degradation just be that
we skip the man page generation (with a warning)
and just use any man pages that are present?

cheers,
Pádraig.