OK. Let's try the following route.
(0) Make docwriter a PyPI package.
I do not have experience with packaging and publishing libraries to pip.
I tried doing it yesterday but got a bunch of import errors, so I might
need some help with this one.
(1) Add a check for (a) `python', (b) `pip', and (c) `docwriter' in
FreeType's `configure' script. If one of those Python components
is not available on the system, emit a warning that `make refdoc'
will fail. This warning should be shown at the end of a
`configure' run so that it isn't lost in the large number of
tests.
Again, I'll need help with this because I'm not sure how we can check
if these are available.
For `make devel', don't do anything special. Simply assume that
`python', `pip', and `pip docwriter' are already installed.
Having a `make refdoc-venv' target is an optional bonus (which should
be documented also), but I think it's better to not be the default
since it needs internet access by default.
Correct. But this option too will mostly work offline after running once, thanks
to caching of pip packages.