Re: patch for doxygen to not depend on tex

["Pouya D. Tafti" <p%san-serriffe.org@localhost>]

On 18 March 2011 19:29, Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> doxygen depends on tex for two reasons:
>
>  at build time, to create the doxygen manual
>
>  at run time, so users can run latex on what doxygen produces
>
> The run-time dependency is unnecessary; users that want to process
> doxygen output to pdf can simply install tex.  It's not like not
> depending on tex makes doxygen unable to produce latex format.
>
> The build-time dependency makes it more heavyweight to build doxygen,
> and is the usual tools/docs tradeoff.
>
> The overall motivation for change is somewhat restricted build
> environments that end up with too many packages.
>
> I've prepared a patch to add a latex option to address both, to ease the
> pain of those who would otherwise not need tex.  The patch leaves it
> enabled by default
>
> So
>
>  Any objections?
>
>  Should I make tex a run-time dependency only, unconditionally?  I

(I assume you meant build-time only.)

Thank you for this.  I would vote for having it as an option (disabled
by default)--if I considered myself entitled/eligible to vote, that
is. :-)  I still remember my surprise when building cross/avr-libc
left me with a host of tex packages through its dependency on doxygen.

Besides this, I was wondering if it would be possible to introduce
some sort of support for separate "system" tex installations in the
pkgsrc infra-structure, since official annual texlive installations
are available on many platforms (including NetBSD/i386), and as much
as I appreciate Min Sik Kim's work on expanding and improving supprt
for tex in pkgsrc, I still find the official texlive distribution more
reliable/predictable across platforms (having a broken tex system is
not an option for me in my everyday work, even for short periods of
time; I do understand that the design of texlive might not be perfect,
but it seems to be well-tested, and does the job rather reliably).

Just my two cents,
Pouya

>  realize it's a stretch, but the current dependency is a bit like
>  making emacs depend on tex because you can export to latex and build
>  from org mode.
>
>  Should I make this disabled by default?  In addition to theoretical
>  answers, I'm curious to hear from actual doxygen users.