Documentation frustrations continue... I really don't want to be "that guy" who complains all the time and doesn't actually fix anything. Today's complaints are the results of an attempt to fix documentation.
I figured I would start with something simple. The HAL "newthread" command is undocumented, I figured I would contribute documentation. I found this page: http://www.machinekit.io/docs/developing/machinekit-developing/ And I followed those instructions to the letter to install machinekit on my beaglebone green. I was able to compile from source (it took an hour, the bone is SLOW). I edited the source of halcmd to fix the built-in help. Built it and tested it. Works great. Then I wanted to update the halcmd man-page. "man halcmd" gave me nothing. On this page: http://www.machinekit.io/docs/hal/tools/ I discovered that RIP builds don't install man pages. Seems odd, the script at scripts/rip-environment does attempt to set a man path, but I don't know the finer points of that stuff. Anyway, I try the "man -M docs/man halcmd" approach as shown on that page. Nothing. Then I look at my checkout, and the man directory tree contains only an empty man9 directory... Where are the damn man pages? I followed the checkout, configure, and build instructions to the letter. Why no man pages? If your default is to not build them (Why?) then the configure switch to turn them on should be documented on http://www.machinekit.io/docs/developing/machinekit-developing/ Even if you're not building them, where is the troff source? (or asciidoc source, or whatever you are using to make man pages) I also found an unrelated bug (addf will allow you to add a function that uses floating point to a thread that doesn't support floating point). While trying to investigate that it seems like the halcmd -v option doesn't work like it used to (but I haven't had a chance to really investigate that, might be my fault). Anyway, I only had a couple hours. I thought I could accomplish something in that time but all I did is drive my frustration level higher. Leaving for a while, hopefully by tomorrow someone can explain how I can contribute an improvement to a man page when the checkout doesn't include the man page! -- John Kasunich [email protected] -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/machinekit. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
