--- Gabor Hojtsy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi People! > > So we are on making the phpdoc workers life > easier... One of the biggest > problems is for starters, that many tools are > needed. There has been > some discussion on dropping the required unix tools, > and base the whole > build system on PHP. That would mean that Windows > people would not need > to have cygwin, which is a huge step forward.
Huh? What is so difficult w/ installing Cygwin? AFAICT I had not seen people who had try installing that had much problem, assuming that they've read the documentation for Cygwin beforehand. I am going from anecdotal information: some of the Molecular Biologists in my old lab (who did not know much about coding/Unix) had not problems intalling Cygwin to run some sequence analysis tools that were Unix-based. I would expect that someone writing code in PHP, that can read/understand C, and is thus helping in documenting the language would have a simpler time. The main concerns I've seen here (and in PEARDOC) where related to the complexity of Docbook, which is initially true, as it has a high learning curve if you have never used a structured document format (e.g. Latex). > I have only found http://phing.tigris.org/ so far, > which is a PHP based > ready-to-use build system. It could do the tasks we > require, *but* it > needs PHP 5 to run, so it might not be the best idea > to employ. Phing is based on Ant, so it can be a nice building system, and if it follows the Ant approach, you just have to write the code for the appropriate task yu want to accomplish, in this case, build the (X)HTML version of the manual (or the PDF, etc.) > The question is up, whether: > > - we should use our own PHP based build scripts > (rewrite configure.in in PHP) Could be but that would require re-inventing the wheel and handle all dependencies and cross-referencing that make was built to handle. Unless there is a clear advantage for the task I am not sold on the idea: "We should only use PHP for all PHP related tasks (documentation in this case) even if they do are a step back in functionality". That is a very shortsighted approach, just because I have a hammer I don't think every problem looks like a nail. > - we should use some "packaged" build system > (Phing or a better / more portable one) Perhaps we should keep this in mind for when PHP 5 is stable, released and in wide use. BTW, why not use Ant and create the appropriate .jar files w/ the tasks? What about that Borges Project that Rasmus mentioned many moons ago? http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/doc/project/Borges/ (BTW, that project uses "make" and is not PHP based) > - we should not drop the unix tools, let windows > guys > sweat the first time they join the team I am for using the "appropriate tool for the task at hand". If the OS that someone uses does not handle it natively but there are extensions to accomplish the task, then use the extensions (Cygwin in this case), or pick a more appropriate environment (e.g. OS). Also, If there is such pain from the Windows-based documentation contributors, then that should be a motivation for them to either create new (or enhance existing) cross-platform tools that do not require Cygwin, etc. Of course, my opinion is biased as I tend to use command line programs more than GUI ones, and (fortunately) have to deal with mostly Unix/Linux at home and work. So, a big "no" for dropping the Unix tools, until someone comes with a replacement that has the same flexibility, functionality, modularity and simplicity of the configuration/building system we use now. I do not care if such hypothetical replacement is written in PHP, Java, or assembly, just that it works and that can be used for the other documentation efforts in the PHP community. Just my 0.02 > Goba ===== --- Jesus M. Castagnetto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/
