Re: What is the correct way of handling generated docs?

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Sat, 29 Dec 2001, Bruce Korb wrote:

> > Can't you simply write a Make rule that will produce .info file
> [...]
> > Am I missing something?
> 
> Yes.  :-( 

Well, perhaps you could describe in a few words how are the *.texi
files produced with the tools you use from whatever file(s) which
serve as the _real_ sources of the docs.  I'm not familiar with
Doxygen, so it's hard to think about possible solutions.

> Without endlessly convoluted change (dependency) checks,
> the docs get rebuilt causing the .info to be rebuilt causing distcheck
> to choke.

You could try doing what the `configure' script does with config.h:
output the *.info files into some temporary directory, then copy them
over the existing ones only if their contents is different
(move-if-change comes to mind).

> The bottom line is that with the current tools, it is necessary to
> trick them at some point, or else wrong things do or don't happen
> at the wrong times.

It's true that various tools assume that Texinfo files are _the_
sources of the docs, so if you case is very different, you might face
an uphill battle.

Is it out of the question to discuss possible alternatives to your
current setup, so that the sources will be maintained in Texinfo?
What exactly are the reasons that you need to produce Texinfo from
some other source language, rather than maintaining them in Texinfo?