Hi Erik,

At 2026-08-31T09:30:50+0000, [email protected] wrote:
> Have just downloaded groff 1.24.0 and installed it on devuan
> excalibur.

"Excalibur"!  Bit of a gauntlet thrown at Debian's feet there, as "the
mothership" is already run by an Anglo-Saxon oligarchy...

> To make configure complete, I did have to first:
> # apt-get build-dep groff
> On a debian-derived distro, that's the lowest-effort way to provide
> all the footling things that configure can hang up on.

Yes, that's entirely idiomatic.

> After that, it was plain sailing.

Glad to hear it!

> I would though, change line 66 in INSTALL to:
> 1. 'cd' to the top directory of the package's tree.
> as 'configure' is in fact not in the 'src' directory, as stated.

Can you clarify?  The 'INSTALL.extra' file[1] reads in relevant part:

$ nl -ba INSTALL.extra | sed -n '44,67p'
    44  Building and Installing from outside the Source Tree
    45  ====================================================
    46
    47  It is also possible to perform the build and installation procedure
    48  outside the source code directory.  In this case an external build
    49  directory structure is created without changing any parts of the source
    50  tree.  This practice is useful if the source code is read-only or if
    51  several different installations, such as for multiple architectures,
    52  should be constructed.
    53
    54  As an example, we will imagine that groff's source code is in
    55  '/usr/local/src/groff' and that the build should happen within the
    56  directory '/home/my/groff-build'.  These directory names can be anything
    57  valid on the operating system.
    58
    59    0. Create '/home/my/groff-build' and 'cd' to that directory.
    60
    61    1. Type '/usr/local/src/groff/configure' to configure groff for your
    62       system.  If you are using 'csh' on an old version of AT&T System V
    63       Unix, you might need to type 'sh /usr/local/src/groff/configure'
    64       instead.
    65
    66    2. Type 'make' to compile groff.  You may wish to add the '-j' option
    67       to accelerate the build on multicore systems.

One can of course adapt those absolute file specifications to relative
ones, but those will necessarily be host-dependent.

> Now to see if 1.24.0 helps to do stuff. (That isn't working in 1.23.0)

Please let us know of any problems.  As you may know, groff 1.25 is now
in its release candidate phase; I'm keen to minimize 1.25's bug count.

Regards,
Branden

[1] The 'INSTALL' file proper, without ".extra", is a file of generic
    instructions for GNU packages.  'INSTALL.extra' is specific to
    groff.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

  • ... dvalin--- via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
    • ... G. Branden Robinson

Reply via email to