From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756530AbcJWK6m convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Sun, 23 Oct 2016 06:58:42 -0400 Received: from smtp3-1.goneo.de ([85.220.129.38]:50545 "EHLO smtp3-1.goneo.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756265AbcJWK6k (ORCPT ); Sun, 23 Oct 2016 06:58:40 -0400 X-Spam-Flag: NO X-Spam-Score: -2.647 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 6.6 \(1510\)) Subject: Re: The downside of math:: From: Markus Heiser In-Reply-To: <20161021153806.5c9b5d7b@lwn.net> Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2016 12:58:24 +0200 Cc: Mauro Carvalho Chehab , LKML Mailing List , linux-doc@vger.kernel.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Message-Id: <3D1565DE-2513-4326-9FFC-6DF713238B51@darmarit.de> References: <20161019170246.339eff9d@lwn.net> <20161019222618.154434f3@vento.lan> <877f93qdd2.fsf@intel.com> <20161021153806.5c9b5d7b@lwn.net> To: Jonathan Corbet , Johannes Berg , Jani Nikula X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1510) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Am 21.10.2016 um 23:38 schrieb Jonathan Corbet : > On Thu, 20 Oct 2016 17:55:21 +0300 > Jani Nikula wrote: > >> I wonder if we could cook up a nice way to make the math:: usage >> conditional on actually being able to render it. > > I think that's the ideal solution. > > I got the docs build working again on my Fedora machine, but it threw me > back into this loop for several iterations: > > while (htmldocs build fails) > see which goddam LaTex file is missing now > dig around to find which Fedora package provides it > dnf install YA-texlive-package Hmm, when I deinstall latex on my Debian box, I only get a warning: WARNING: LaTeX command 'latex' cannot be run (needed for math display), check the pngmath_latex setting IMO the warning is OK, if not read below. > This is just the kind of thing that I don't want to impose on anybody > wanting to build the docs; if we get back to a place where almost nobody > can do it again, we'll not have improved much. I guess, that Jon walks through the latex installation hell on fedora, which mauro has already done in August. Please take a look at the discussion we had about math and PDF generation: https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-doc@vger.kernel.org/msg05583.html With this, I think we have a leak of knowledge and we should document latex installation dependencies right now. If you don't want to see a warning log, we have to consider a solution like Johannes Berg posted here: https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-doc@vger.kernel.org/msg07071.html @johannes: since this thread and our "sequence diagrams" thread addressing the same questions (how should we handle dependencies from extensions) I propose to continue the discussion here in this thread with Jon. > LaTeX is a necessary evil for PDF output, it seems, but I really think > that, one way or another, we need to be able to build the other formats > without it. I wish, but I can't see any serious alternative. Thats why I think, we should accept latex and have to document it well. Further I think we should not generate more (and more) external requirements like e.g. plantuml, Java or reportlab discussed here: https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-doc@vger.kernel.org/msg07035.html I understand the need of sequences diagrams and I like to see such a feature in the kernel documentation. On the other side, since we have to maintain all dependencies well over a long time period on distributions with different package managers, I really hesitate to include dependencies which might flood out the banks. Right here, in the discussion of the math:: extension (which is part of the standard sphinx installation) we see, what problems can occur on different systems installations. -- Markus --