#3696 ./configure options for documentation directories not honored

[Wolfgang Dautermann]

Several ./configure options, Maxima provides, seem to have no effect at all. E.g.

./configure --prefix=/tmp/m --htmldir=/tmp/htmldir
make
make html
make install

installs the HTML files in /tmp/m/share/maxima/branch_5_44_base_210_g5d2af47b6_dirty/doc/html, not as it should in /tmp/htmldir. The wrong directory is also listed with the lisp variable *maxima-htmldir*:

$ /tmp/m/bin/maxima 
Maxima branch_5_44_base_210_g5d2af47b6_dirty http://maxima.sourceforge.net
using Lisp CLISP 2.49.60+ (2017-06-25)
Distributed under the GNU Public License. See the file COPYING.
Dedicated to the memory of William Schelter.
The function bug_report() provides bug reporting information.
(%i1) :lisp *maxima-htmldir*
/tmp/m/share/maxima/branch_5_44_base_210_g5d2af47b6_dirty/doc/html

(and the same effect with other documented options like --pdfdir=..., ...)

Best regards, Wolfgang

[Robert Dodier]

Looking at doc/info/Makefile, I see that it says htmlinstdir = $(dochtmldir) and dochtmldir = $(docdir)/html so maybe that's why HTML files aren't installed to the nominal HTML directory.

doc/info/Makefile does have htmldir = /tmp/FOOHTML where /tmp/FOOHTML is what I specified in to ./configure, it's just that isn't used as the HTML installation directory.

Now doc/info/Makefile was generated from doc/info/Makefile.am (via Makefile.in). I see in doc/info/Makefile.am it says htmlinstdir = $(dochtmldir). I wonder if it would help to change that line in Makefile.am to htmlinstdir = $(htmldir) or maybe remove it? I haven't tried it.

[Robert Dodier]

Following patch seems to ensure reference manual HTML files go into the folder designated by --htmldir=. However, there are other files which are put in other places, so I guess there's more than one thing to fix up.

$ git diff -- doc/info/Makefile.am
diff --git a/doc/info/Makefile.am b/doc/info/Makefile.am
index 375bde36a..620515bd0 100644
--- a/doc/info/Makefile.am
+++ b/doc/info/Makefile.am
@@ -556,7 +556,7 @@ genericdirDATA = $(figurefiles) \
 contents.hhc index.hhk header.hhp maxima.hhp

 htmlname = maxima
-htmlinstdir = $(dochtmldir)
+htmlinstdir = $(htmldir)
 include $(top_srcdir)/common-html.mk

 all-local: warn_texinfo

[Wolfgang Dautermann]

Thanks Robert, that seems to install most of the files to the specified directory.
:lisp *maxima-htmldir*
does still report the wrong directory.

Note: Maybe that is to much work for that issue.
I do not have an objection, if these options (--htmldir, --pdfdir, --dvidir, ...) are removed, if one really wants to install these files somewhere else, one can move them after installation (and maybe create a symlink).
But if these ./configure options exist, these options should work as documented.

Best regards, Wolfgang

[Gunter Königsmann]

src/init-cl.lisp tells us:

    (setq *maxima-htmldir*   (combine-path datadir package-version "doc" "html"))

Many of the other paths are stored in environment variables in src/maxima.in whose value is then read back by src/init-cl.lisp instead.

There is a handful of linux distributions that have their own ideas on where would be a logical place each file can be stored in. I guess we would make their work easier when we