Re: [PATCH RFC] scripts/sphinx-pre-install: add a script to check Sphinx install

[Markus Heiser]

Hy Mauro,

thanks a lot for your RFC, your patch consolidate a lot of
knowledge around Sphinx build requirements and brings a huge
value I will no longer miss.

I tested v6 of this patch on ubuntu and there is only some
conceptual bikeshedding I can do. 


> Am 15.07.2017 um 14:49 schrieb Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 
> As I said, the idea is to let the user to decide what it wants.
> 
> I focused on the packaging approach first because such logic
> is required for other packages. Now that it is working, just
> sent a version 5 that will use virtualenv for Sphinx by default.

Thanks! .. I don't know how I can make it better (I'am not a perl
programmer) but it seems, that global

my @missing;
my @opt_missing;

and the "sub add_package" is dominant, while the 'virtaulenv'
is glued in .. may we can find a better structure (later).


> Yet, before spending more time on such script, I'd like to have
> more feedback if:
> 
> 	- is this approach acceptable?

Truly Yes!

I see, there is a value in the the "OS-packaging approach" even
if I prefer the  "native-packaging approach". Last means I like
to use the native packaging tools from python and LiveTeX.

For python, instead of :

		printf "\t$virtualenv sphinx_1.4\n";
		printf "\tpip install 'docutils==0.12'\n";
		printf "\tpip install 'Sphinx==1.4.9'\n";
		printf "\tpip install sphinx_rtd_theme\n";

add Documentation/sphinx/requirements.txt:

<snip: requirements.txt> ---
docutils==0.12
Sphinx==1.4.9
sphinx_rtd_theme
<snap> ---------------------

And the print ...

		printf "\t$virtualenv sphinx_1.4\n";
		printf "\tpip install -r Documentation/sphinx/requirements.txt\n";

For TexLive:

ATM I have no idea how to set up a *requierements* file and
install everything without sudo. But I have seen your 'kpsewhich'
approach  which is very interesting for me. I suppose a solution
for this will end in a combination of 'kpsewhich' and  'tlmgr'.
But for this I have to do more investigations / sorry that
I can't spend more time on this task right now.

> 	- should it have an optional argument that will make the
> 	  script to run the needed commands;

No. We can do this later upstream.

> 	- should it be integrated at the Documentation/Makefile?

No.

> 	- what's the best name/location for such script?

I like to see the script under Documentation/sphinx

> I guess it could also use kpsewhich to check if the needed
> texlive packages are installed. However, the problem with such
> approach is that texlive-kpathsea-bin package should be installed
> first, in order to provide such command.

I see you have solved it in v6 .. Thanks!

> 
> So, installing PDF and math dependencies would require two steps.
> 
>> I tested sphinx-pre-install and it works fine for me, thats not the
>> point. The point is: what do we recommend? E.g. for me it advices me
>> to run:
>> 
>> 	sudo apt-get install python3-sphinx python3-sphinx-rtd-theme
>> 
>> We should not assume that the developer (better: the build-user) owns the
>> privilege to install fine grained OS packages. There is a admin-part and
>> a user-part:
> 
> That's not relevant. Typically, anyone that is building a Kernel has
> admin privileges, otherwise it can't actually test the Kernel that was
> built.

Hmm .. buildbots and Continuous Integration (CI)?

> Ok, there are exceptions to that, but, on such case, the user should
> be able to request the admin to install whatever packages are needed
> to build the Kernel.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mauro