Re: redundant DOC files

[Leo]

On 2007-01-20, Eli Zaretskii said:

>> From: Leo <address@hidden>
>> Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 06:34:24 +0000
>> 
>
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 10 10:42 DOC-22.0.92.1
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 10 12:09 DOC-22.0.92.2
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 14 04:52 DOC-22.0.92.3
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 14 04:57 DOC-22.0.92.4
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 18 21:46 DOC-22.0.92.5
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 18 21:48 DOC-22.0.92.6
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 20 06:08 DOC-22.0.92.7
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.1M Jan 20 06:11 DOC-22.0.92.8
>> 
>> Can someone tell me what is the use of this DOC-* file?
>
> These are the doc strings for all the functions and variables that are
> preloaded into Emacs.
>

Thank you for this.

>
>> And why we have to have that many DOC-* files?
>
> Each one goes with the corresponding emacs-22.0.92.N binary which you
> have in your src directory.  The theory behind this is that you might
> wish to try an older build, e.g. to see whether some problem you find
> in the latest build happens in earlier builds a swell.  When you do
> that, you will need the corresponding DOC-* file, because otherwise
> documentation commands could show you garbage.

Those emacs-22.0.92.N lying in the emacs/src dir will use the
DOC-22.0.92.N in emacs/etc. Thus I agree all versions should be kept
for testing purpose etc as you mentioned.

But when one does make install/bootstrap, only one emacs version is
installed while *ALL* DOC-* versions are installed i.e. the
*installed* old DOC-* files can neither be used by the installed emacs
binary nor by those in emacs/src. That's why I think they are
redundant.

>> Because each time after installing Emacs, the first thing I do is
>> go to the data-directory and delete all of them except the one
>> correspond to current Emacs version.
>
> If you don't need the previous emacs-* binaries, it's okay to remove
> them and the corresponding DOC-* files.
>
>> The point is if I have 50 builds then the DOC-* will take up more than
>> 100M disk space.
>
> Whoever cares about 100MB of disk space these days? ;-)
>
> And 50 builds give you 600MB worth of Emacs binaries (which you never
> mentioned in your message), so adding 100MB more to that is hardly a
> major issue, is it?

-- 
Leo <sdl.web AT gmail.com>                         (GPG Key: 9283AA3F)