Finally, if you change the build system for the PHP core documentation project so radically without so much as a nod toward all the subsidiary PHP documentation efforts we'll all end up even more out of sync than we currently are. I have made a fair amount of effort to make php-gtk-doc at least vaguely compatible with both phpdoc and livedocs; every change you implement takes my team (and, presumably, peardoc and smartydoc teams) further from achieving some kind of homogeny. We don't need to do everything exactly the same, sure, but changing the build system requirements is a very big move! and one that will lose us the occasional phpdoc team member who wants to help out on a smaller project for a while.
There was quite some discussion on creating a central build system for the documentation projects, and livedocs will be a move towards this direction, since it should be developed with portability in mind (even for non PHP.net projects to utilize). That would replace many of the configure options and make targets of phpdoc (as well as php-gtk-doc and peardoc in case those teams will utilize livedocs too). That would greatly simplify things...
I am looking at the build system from the ease-of-use perspective. If you only need to checkout the CVS module and can directly run the PHP script, it is much easier then installing cygwin, getting familiar with the command line, and put all the tools on the appropriate paths... Since livedocs will hopefully make most of the current make targets obsolote, the build system will be much smaller, and easier to port to another environment (eg. Phing).
Goba
