gnome.yelp() doesn't compile help pages at compile time

Question

gnome.yelp() doesn't compile help pages at compile time

mjog opened this issue 7 years ago · comments

Currently, gnome.yelp() does not build Yelp help pages at compile time, instead it both builds and installs the help pages using (what I assume is) an install-time script hook.

Geary has historically built its help pages as part of the build process so we know it's working, to be able to proofread the manual using the app from the source directory, to catch tool errors, and so on. It would be good to be able to continue to do this.

PR to follow.

mjog · Answer 1 · Wed Dec 13 2017 10:50:20 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Famous last words. This is a bit murkier than I was expecting. My initial plan was to simply to arrange to call yelphelper.py build as a run target, but then that still won't get executed by default, so then I looked at making it a custom target, but realised that would need a list of generated output files so it knows when it is out of date, but then you want to only rebuild the minimum if something has actually changed (e.g. a page or a .po file), and it all started to look kind of sucky.

So my currently plan of attack is to actually do it properly: as follows, in gnome.yelp():

Read LIGUAS to work out what languages are present
Create two custom targets for each lang:
1. Run msgfmt to create builddir/lang/lang.gmo, depending on srcdir/lang/lang.po
2. Run itstool to create each builddir/lang/source.page, depending on builddir/lang/lang.gmo and each source page
Create a new custom target help-project that depends on each merged source page, and return that along with the current help-project-pot and help-project-po targets.

Thoughts?

mjog · Answer 2 · Fri Dec 15 2017 12:34:41 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

This is slightly problematic in that if the user does a ninja install as root the gmo files and merged pages in the build directory are owned by root, so you also need to be root to delete them.

This was reported by a user for Geary's build.

Patrick · Answer 3 · Fri Dec 15 2017 12:46:07 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

That is a general problem any time you call ninja as another user, just a bit more prominent if its under install.

Federico Bruni · Answer 4 · Wed Nov 07 2018 13:51:44 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

As mentioned here, a consequence of this bug is that files built at install step won't be removed by ninja uninstall.

Patrick · Answer 5 · Wed Nov 07 2018 21:41:35 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

As mentioned here, a consequence of this bug is that files built at install step won't be removed by ninja uninstall.

That is #1601

Abderrahim Kitouni · Answer 6 · Fri Mar 01 2019 03:49:22 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

@mjog Any news on this one?

It's really annoying that ninja install takes more than a minute (on an SSD) even though I just ran install.

mjog · Answer 7 · Mon Mar 30 2020 18:41:15 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

@abderrahim, sorry, fell right off my plate, quite far apparently. :/

Eli Schwartz · Answer 8 · Sat Aug 28 2021 05:15:00 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

Hey @mjog, seems like it fell off your plate again. :)

I don't have a strong interest in yelp, but I do rather care about this in the context of i18n.gettext(). Perhaps 487d45c can give you some inspiration on how to fix this for yelp too?

mjog · Answer 9 · Sat Aug 28 2021 06:21:33 GMT+0800 (China Standard Time)

@eli-schwartz ah yeah, looks like it. I'm not like to get to this any time soon though, unfortunately. If anyone else want so step up, feel free.