On Thu, 20 Oct 2022, Martin Liška wrote:

> > Also, but not strictly part of the release issue:
> > 
> > (d) Builds with missing or old Sphinx should work regardless of whether 
> > such files are in the source directory - but if they aren't in the source 
> > directory, the effect of missing or old Sphinx (detected at configure 
> > time) should be to disable building and installing documentation.
> 
> All right Joseph, is it something you're willing to help me once we start
> using Sphinx? Apparently, there will be many consequent steps after we switch.

Sure, but most of the conditionals are *already* present, just need 
updating as part of the Sphinx transition.  E.g. gcc/Makefile.in has 
BUILD_INFO and GENERATED_MANPAGES conditionals based on configure tests 
for whether relevant tools are present and new enough; the rules for 
$(DESTDIR)$(infodir)/%.info quietly allow the info files not to be 
present, so installing also works without the info files or tools to build 
them, and the rules for installing man pages similarly ignore errors; and 
there are srcinfo and srcman rules, enabled based on @GENINSRC@, to copy 
those built files to the source directory, which are what's used when 
--enable-generated-files-in-srcdir is used as part of building a release 
tarball.

The main thing I've suggested that I think may actually be new is an error 
for trying to build a release tarball without new-enough Sphinx (I think 
the current rules would quietly not copy info / man pages to the source 
directory if build tools were missing - but having those tools missing 
when building a release tarball is much less likely than not having 
new-enough Sphinx).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com