Re: [PATCH 5/6] gnu: Enable gnome-doc-utils tests

[John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au>]

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 11:23:12AM +0200, Ludovic Court??s wrote:
     John Darrington <john@darrington.wattle.id.au> skribis:
     
     > On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 10:59:17PM +0200, Ludovic Court??s wrote:
     
     [...]
     
     >      The problem is that ???search-path-specification??? is meant for $PATH-like
     >      variables that list directories, not files.
     >
     > That occurred to me too.  But what problems does it actually cause?
     
     That we can???t use it for $XML_CATALOG_FILES.
     
     >      So I see two solutions:
     >      
     >        1. Patch libxml2 so that it honors a new variable, say
     >           $XML_CATALOG_DIRECTORIES, which would allow us to use
     >           ???search-path-specification???.
     >      
     >        2. Augment support for search paths to allow file-based search paths.
     >      
     >      (2) may be best in the long run, but it has ramifications in different
     >      places.
     >      
     >
     > (1) seems like a good idea only if upstream can be persuaded to adopt it.
     
     Which is unlikely, given that it???s redundant with $XML_CATALOG_FILES.
     
     > What are the ramifications of (2) ?
     
     There are changes in the build tools, for instance ???search-path-as-list???
     (used by ???set-path-environment-variable???, used in gnu-build-system.scm)
     expects directories, not files.  And all this calls things
     ???directories???.
     
     This is a change we could schedule for the next core-updates.

This sounds like it is the most sensible solution. 

J'
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