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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