Re: pdf documents won't build

[Neil Jerram]

Ross Boylan <address@hidden> writes:

> 2. In the doc/tutorial, I got these errors, even on the 2nd run of
> pdftex:
> Chapter 4 [11]
> l.945: Undefined cross reference `Scheme data representation-snt'.
> l.945: Undefined cross reference `Scheme data representation-snt'.
> l.945: Undefined cross reference `Scheme data representation-pg'. [12]
> [13]
> [14] [15] [16] Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 (Concept Index)
> (./guile-tut.cps)
>
> (I later changed to doc/tutorial and did make clean pdf.  The results
> were unchanged.)

This has now been fixed in our CVS (before the 1.8.1 release); thanks
for reporting it though.

> 3. In doc/goops I got
> [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] Chapter 3 [32] [33] [34] [35] Chapter 4
> [36]
> (./goops-tutorial.texi [37]
> Error: pdfetex (file hierarchy.pdf): cannot find image file
>  ==> Fatal error occurred, the output PDF file is not finished!

Similarly.

>> Thanks; we appreciate your report.  Given that there is an easy
>> workaround, though, how important is this for you?
> Given that I now have the 1.8 docs, which are pretty close (?), and that
> these are now available in various forms on the web, not so important.
>
> Still, it would be nice if it worked.  I suspect the problems I'm seeing
> now are separate issues from the original one.
>
> If regular make needs to be run first, perhaps the default target (or
> something appropriate) should be in the prerequisites of the doc
> targets.

Ideally yes, but I don't think there's an easy way to do this.  It's
an example of the problems that Peter Miller's essay "Recursive Make
Considered Harmful"
(http://www.pcug.org.au/~millerp/rmch/recu-make-cons-harm.html).

> There are a few reasons it would be good to make this work:
> * the 1.6 docs are not readily available, and if you're working with 1.6
> (as I guess I and other Debian users are) it's good to have the exact
> documenation. 
> * If possible, it would be good to be able to build the documentation
> without having everything on hand that is needed to build the full
> package.  Since I appear to have succeeded with the vanilla make, that
> may already be the case.  But I have a lot of development tools on my
> machine already. 
> * If this is supposed to just work, maybe it indicates an automake
> problem that would be good to report.

I think we should review whether it's a good idea to have parts of the
manual auto-generated during make.  My feeling is that this could
better be a developer-side activity inside, like autogen.sh.  Then the
.texis as shipped would be ready for feeding to texinfo etc.

>> > I'm a bit surprised you don't have people enter bugs in the bug tracker;
>> > the BUGS file said to send an email like this.
>> 
>> I agree that it is unusual not to use a tracker these days, but
>> address@hidden is still for now our primary mechanism for reporting
>> and dealing with bug reports.

I should have added here that it does also work to use the savannah
tracker; an email to address@hidden is generated automatically.

> You might add to the instructions that fact that you need to subscribe
> to the list in order to post there smoothly; I found out the hard way. 

Thanks; I've updated lots of places now to say this.

Regards,
     Neil