[fpc-devel] MakeSkel and FPDoc projects

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be schrieb:
> 
> 
> On Sat, 17 Dec 2011, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> 
>> Michael Van Canneyt schrieb:
>>
>>>
>>> Feel free to create this program. If I may give some advice: the 
>>> tasks you outline belong in a "Documentation writers IDE".
>>
>> To some degree, maybe. But checking for updates should be doable by a 
>> script, without a need to open an IDE - for every single package!
> 
> I have done so for years, with the existing tools, using the Makefiles. 
> No changes were necessary.

Can you explain that a bit more? I'm not a professional commandline 
user, perhaps I'm doing something stupid?

BTW I mean tracking changes in the source code, which require to update 
the documentation files accordingly (makeskel --update ...). I don't see 
how a Makefile is involved in this task? This is different from the 
following:

>> Currently changes to the RTL and FCL (MakeFiles) require a dry-run of 
>> make, analysis of the resulting commandline, and a manual merge with 
>> the existing project. According to the Unix philosophy another tool is 
>> required, that automates the project file update, and one more for 
>> updating the project file when description files are added...
> 
> According to Unix philosophy, the person doing so is aware of what he is 
> doing,
> and makes the necessary changes (if there are such changes) to the 
> project file himself.
> 
> I do not believe the tools can make the correct decisions, except in the
> most trivial circumstances.

The tool should update the file lists *only* (input, descr), and leave 
everything else in the project file unmodified. This has not been a big 
problem with textual INI files, but the XML project files can contain 
further information (element attributes...), that is interleaved with 
the filename entries.


>> But when I have to use Lazarus with different settings, for building 
>> applications (last release or trunk, with or without patches for a 
>> dockable IDE), and for different FPC versions (e.g. trunk for building 
>> the documentation tools), life can become very complicated :-(
> 
> No doubt. But instead of blaming the tools, maybe you should reconsider 
> the way you
> organize your work. I have many versions of FPC and Lazarus floating 
> around,
> on various platforms. I seem not to have all these problems you are
> experiencing, yet I use the same tools.
> 
> So excuse me for believing that the problem is not in the tools :-)

Depends on the tools. There is not much choice in using an hammer, but 
computer tools more ressemble complex production robots...

DoDi