Re: bug#12715: [PATCH] build: do not require help2man at build-from-tarball time

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:

> On 10/26/2012 10:34 AM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> +** Build-related
>> +
>> +  The generated man/*.1 man pages are no longer distributed.  Building
>> +  without perl, you would create stub man pages, and besides would be
>> +  unable to run a significant percentage of the tests (so don't do that!).
>> +  Thus, while perl is not an official prerequisite (build and "make check"
>> +  will still succeed), any resulting man pages would be inferior.
>
> We should probably mention that this fixes a parallel build failure
> when building modified sources, like a patched distro package for example.

Yes.  Good point.
How about this?

I was tempted to note it in the "Bug fixes" section,
but figures this would be enough.

** Build-related

  Perl is now more of a prerequisite.  It has long been required in order
  to run (not skip) a significant percentage of the tests.  Now, it is
  also required in order to generate proper man pages, via help2man. The
  generated man/*.1 man pages are no longer distributed.  Building without
  perl, you would create stub man pages.  Thus, while perl is not an
  official prerequisite (build and "make check" will still succeed), any
  resulting man pages would be inferior.  In addition, this fixes a bug
  in distributed (not from clone) Makefile.in that could cause parallel
  build failure when building from modified sources, as is common practice
  for a patched distribution package.