Git Repository Merge Request #10: Add options to enable/disable docs and demos (open)

Add options to enable/disable docs and demos

Originally written by Anthony Viallard
viallard@syscom-instruments.com.

[Vincent: adapt patch to 5.0.5 version]

Signed-off-by: Thomas Petazzoni thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com
Signed-off-by: Vicente Olivert Riera Vincent.Riera@imgtec.com
[Retrieved (and slightly updated) from:
https://git.buildroot.net/buildroot/tree/package/gnuplot/0001-configure-add-without-demo-option.patch]
Signed-off-by: Fabrice Fontaine fontaine.fabrice@gmail.com

[Ethan Merritt]

Please explain the motivation for this change. When is it ever an advantage to configure so that it is not possible to build the demos or docs? I can understand that you might choose not to build them, but why make it impossible? Is it not sufficient to do

./configure
cd src; make install

Anyhow...
After merging this, when I build I get the following warnings from ./configure:

=== configuring in docs (/home/merritt/git/gnuplot-eam/docs)
configure: WARNING: no configuration information is in docs
=== configuring in demo (/home/merritt/git/gnuplot-eam/demo)
configure: WARNING: no configuration information is in demo

This does not seem to have any permanent effect on the build, but it would be nicer not to issue spurious warnings. Any idea what this is about?

Edit: I get these warnings from the default ./configure. I.e. even when the new options to disable demo and docs are not selected.

[Fabrice Fontaine]

Buildroot is used to create embedded linux systems through cross-compilation. Our users don't need the demo or docs to avoid wasting space on their systems.
Moreover, we can't even build docs, because we can't call ./doc2gih on the host as this binary is cross-compiled for the target.

Concerning those warnings, they are raised by the AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS which are not needed anymore, I'll update the PR to remove them.

[Ethan Merritt]

I understand why you don't want to build the docs or demos. What I don't understand is why you want to address this at the level of changing the configuration file, rather than simply restricting the build to the parts you want? cd src; make

[Fabrice Fontaine]

That's because we have a standard behavior for all our autotools-package, so it's more convenient / usual to add these options and run the standard make / make install than "hacking" this standard behavior and run make -C src and make -C src install. If you think that these options are not a good idea, that's your wright.