Re: install-html and install-pdf improvements

[Carlos O'Donell <carlos@codesourcery.com>]

Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Apr 2009, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
>> AFAICS, neither gdb/Makefile.in, nor anyone of the Makefile.in files
>> in its subdirectory, including gdb/doc/, uses $(docdir).  So I'm
>> wondering why do we need a variable no one uses, and why do we pass it
>> to sub-Make?
>>
>> IOW, why not just have $(htmldir) and $(pdfdir) in the Makefile's, and
>> let the top-level configure figure out where they should be, based on
>> "--with-*dir" switches?  The sub-Make's would then get these values
>> from the variables we pass to them, and there's no need to compute
>> $(docdir) again in subdirectories.  Note that, even according to your
>> patch, gdb/doc/Makefile.in does not define nor use $(docdir), only the
>> other two.  I'm asking why can't we do the same in gdb/ as well?
> 
> Carlos, do you have any comments on the design underlying your patches 
> here, regarding what directory variables should be defined in which 
> makefiles?  Were you aiming for each directory to be configurable 
> independently when using a newer version of autoconf, so meaning that 
> docdir and datarootdir should be defined in gdb/doc/Makefile.in, or for 
> configuration always to be required to be at toplevel with directories 
> expanded by make there and passed down in which case some variables may 
> not be required in some subdirectories, or something else?
> 
> The thread starts at 
> <http://sourceware.org/ml/gdb-patches/2009-04/msg00424.html> and as far as 
> I can see I did not make any changes to the sets of variables you defined 
> in each directory.

The goal was to take a step towards behaving like the newer autoconf
would behave, and to allow independent configuration for each directory.

There should be values of docdir and datarootdir defined in
gdb/doc/Makefile.in, and if not specified, the values of pdfdir and
htmldir should be set to defaults as defined in the GNU Coding Standard.

The patch does not implement this last requirement, but that was the idea.

Cheers,
Carlos.
-- 
Carlos O'Donell
CodeSourcery
carlos@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x716