GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Jeremy Bryant]

Hi Guix developers,

The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?

Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
for obvious GNU-related reasons.

We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well as
specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of a
software project.

WDYT?

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Suhail Singh]

Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:

> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.  How about
> distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is this
> something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?

Guix has had SICP available via Info format since 2016:
<https://packages.guix.gnu.org/packages/sicp/20180718-3.bda03f7/>.  The
Info file is built directly from the Texinfo source by invoking
makeinfo:
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/scheme.scm#n626>.

Packaging becomes even easier when the Texinfo source is available as an
ELPA package.  For comparison, I created a patch for the similar sicp
Emacs package (<https://github.com/webframp/sicp-info>):
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/74906>.

The package definition is somewhat simpler since it obviates the manual
invocation of makeinfo.

> We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well
> as specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of
> a software project.
>
> WDYT?

Given a standalone Texinfo source that we want to distribute as an Info
manual, creating a corresponding ELPA package repository is especially
effective.  It makes packaging into Guix easier.  Additionally, it makes
the generated Info manual available to users of Emacs who don't use Guix
(via package-vc-install etc).

-- 
Suhail

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Cayetano Santos]

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>dim. 15 déc. 2024 at 22:34, Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> wrote:

> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
> for obvious GNU-related reasons.

Remember you always have the possibility to create a dedicated guix
channel, external but complementary to guix upstream itself, to
distribute manuals. This would about any additional overload on guix
maintenance tasks.

--
Cayetano Santos
GnuPG Key:   https://meta.sr.ht/~csantosb.pgp
FingerPrint: CCB8 1842 F9D7 058E CD67 377A BF5C DF4D F6BF 6682

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Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hello,

Cayetano Santos <csantosb@inventati.org> writes:

>>dim. 15 déc. 2024 at 22:34, Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> wrote:
>
>> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
>> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
>> for obvious GNU-related reasons.
>
> Remember you always have the possibility to create a dedicated guix
> channel, external but complementary to guix upstream itself, to
> distribute manuals. This would about any additional overload on guix
> maintenance tasks.

Well, the topic being GNU manuals, they'd be more than at home in GNU
Guix.  Typically though they come with the packages themselves, such as
'libc.info.gz' which is shipped with glibc.

I think Guix would be a fine place to have them packaged and made
available.  We already have the C manual you mentioned; it's a great
read!  You can read it with

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix shell info-reader c-intro-and-ref -- info c'
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

More info on this package:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix show c-intro-and-ref
name: c-intro-and-ref
version: 0.0.0-1.47e5a23
outputs:
+ out: tout
systems: x86_64-linux i686-linux
dependencies: texinfo@6.8
location: gnu/packages/c.scm:83:4
homepage: https://www.gnu.org/
license: FDL 1.3+
synopsis: GNU C Language Intro and Reference  
description: This manual explains the C language for use with the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) on the
+ GNU/Linux system and other systems.  We refer to this dialect as GNU C.  If you already know C, you can use
+ this as a reference manual.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Divya Ranjan]

Hello, Jeremy,
Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:

> Hi Guix developers,
>
> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
> How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
> this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?

I believe this is certainly feasible, and desirable. Since Guix itself relies a lot on functioning with info for its documentation requirements.

> Following a discussion on emacs-devel, several people suggested that
> GNU Guix may be a a good way to contemplate this distribution mechanism,
> for obvious GNU-related reasons.
>
> We discussed both a comprehensive solution for Info manuals, as well as
> specific cases such as RMS's C manual (c.info) which is not part of a
> software project.

As Maxim noted, the particular manual already exists. But we need to think about how exactly to package the Info manuals. Since Guix’s process of packaging is a bit differently organized, we’d have to figure out where exactly should the package definitions for these manuals live in the Guix source tree. I see that the C manual is in gnu/packages/c.scm and SICP in gnu/packages/scheme.scm, so maybe each manual could go into the relevant program/language’s guile module. Or, should we have a module just for the Info manuals? I see gnu/packages/texinfo.scm and it has mostly a few packages related to TeXinfo readers, could we put them there, or only the miscellaneous ones?

Those more knowledgeable about Guix’s source-tree management should shed light on this.

Regards,
-- 
Divya Ranjan,
Philosophy, Mathematics, Libre Software.

Re: GNU Manuals in Info/HTML format via Guix?

[Björn Bidar]

First of all I want to quickly write that I was staying quite as I'm not
a Guix guy but just interested in extending and improving the distribution
of info manuals.

Divya Ranjan <divya@subvertising.org> writes:

> Hello, Jeremy,
> Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net> writes:
>
>> Hi Guix developers,
>>
>> The GNU Project's documentation format is Texinfo.
>> How about distributing some or many Texinfo manuals through Guix, is
>> this something that is consistent with previous norms in Guix?
>
> I believe this is certainly feasible, and desirable. Since Guix itself
> relies a lot on functioning with info for its documentation
> requirements.

I think Guix could serve as the showcase project on how to best
integrate and distribute info manuals in distributions.
For my efforts that Guix has been that. If I was looking for an info
manual for something it almost all the time I found it at Guix.
The only exception was the manual of Lua but for that one there was only
one manual conversion very long time ago.