[debhelper-devel] Bug#865707: debhelper: Please support DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc

[Niels Thykier]

Control: tags -1 pending

On Sat, 24 Jun 2017 01:32:22 +0200 Robert Luberda <robert at debian.org> wrote:
> Package: debhelper
> Version: 10.2.5
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> The Debian Policy has recently introduced DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc. 
> I've just tried to handle it in one of my packages, namely afterstep,
> but it quickly turned out that if the documentation files are not
> generated, then dh_install fails because it still trying to install 
> them. Fortunatelly my debian/*.install and other debhelper files are 
> generated, so I can easily filter /usr/share/{doc,man} out of them,
> but then dh_installwm fails due to missing man page.
> 
> Could you please add support for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc into debhelper,
> so that it will not try to install anything into /usr/share/doc (except
> copyright, changelog, and maybe NEWS.Debian), and /usr/share/man? Also
> it should not install doc-base files either for obvious reason.
> 
> I think this will require changes at least in dh_install, dh_installdoc,
> dh_installman, dh_installwm.
> 
> (The Policy says in section 4.9.1 that the `nodoc' option should cause build 
> process to skip generation of documentation files, like man pages, API 
> documentation, etc. This probably means that the non-generated documentation 
> can be sill installed, however I am not sure if debhelper will be able to 
> distinguish between generated and non-generated doc files on its own, 
> that's why I think that debhelper in the `nodoc' mode should simply avoid 
> installing any documentation).
> 
> 
> Regards,
> robert
> 
> [...]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the suggestion.

I am planning to implement most of this in debhelper 10.6, but there
will be some caveats.

What will work:

 * dh_installdocs
 * dh_installman
 * dh_installwm
 * dh_installexamples

What will not change / work out of the box:

 * dh_install

I am leaning towards making people use the other helpers for
documentation (or rely on dh_exec's filtering) as that is a general
applicable solution to this issue.  To make this easier, I intend to
make the other helpers easier to use for this purpose (sadly, it
requires a compat bump for the "best" part).

Thanks,
~Niels