Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] Fix installation paths with "make install-doc"

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:45:34 -0800

Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]> writes:

> John Keeping wrote:
>
>>   Documentation/Makefile: fix inherited {html,info,man}dir
>
> This doesn't seem to have hit the list.

More importantly, 

>> When using the top-level install-doc target the html, info and man
>> target directories are inherited from the top-level Makefile by the
>> documentation Makefile as relative paths, which is not expected and
>> results in the files being installed in an unexpected location.

I am not sure what problem it is trying to address.  During every
cycle "make doc && make install-man install-html" is run for all
integration branches and it didn't cause any problems.

A wild guess.  John, are you using config.mak.autogen?

I _think_ exporting mandir/html/infodir from the top-level Makefile
is wrong to begin with.  We should drop the "export mandir" from
there.

Giving them unusual meaning (e.g. "mandir = share/man") is already
bad and that needs to be fixed by limiting this "oh, on some
platforms we compile-in GIT_MAN_PATH as a relative path to an
unspecified place" insanity only to where -DGIT_MAN_PATH=<path> is
defined.  The path used there does not help the building and
installation of the documentation at all, so the variable used for
the purpose of giving that <path> should not be named the same way
as the variable used on Documentation/Makefile to name the real path
in the first place.

Perhaps rename these to runtime_{man,html,info}dir or something and
make sure {man,html,info}dir are defined as the real paths whose
default values begin with $(prefix)?