Re: svn co and build of PHP manual could be clearer

On Mar 20, 2010, at 4:56 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > in order to stay on top of things, i thought i'd "svn co" the > development stream of the PHP manual, but it seems that doing that > could be more clearly explained. > > starting here: > > http://www.php.net/download-docs.php I'll add information here to make it clearer. > there is no mention whatsoever about doing an svn checkout of the > manual -- how to do that is buried partway down in the page here: > > http://php.net/svn.php > > it really should be mentioned on that first page, no? also, once i do > the checkout: > > $ svn checkout http://svn.php.net/repository/phpdoc/en/trunk > ../phpdoc-en > > there's nothing in that checkout that tells me how to configure and > build the manual. i look in vain for a README or Makefile or > "configure" script. a little searching and i eventually end up here: Unfortunately that information is incorrect but has been corrected (in SVN) because when we moved to CVS it all changed (not just the names). Not sure how that happened. I also just now added a README within en/ that references the one found within doc-base/. > http://doc.php.net/php > > where, curiously, the "PHP section" link at the bottom refers back to > itself. how odd. eventually, i follow the link labelled > "Documentation Howto" over there on the right, looking for build > instructions, but i still don't see them. i see directions for how to > edit and validate XML files, but is there a single page with > instructions for how to simply generate the manual HTML? It links to itself because every project uses that text, including the root page. Not ideal but a quick [temporary] fix that remained. The trouble with only downloading en/ (due to the incorrect svn checkout reference), you're missing the doc-base/ directory that the HOWTO refers to. So all the scripts, the README, but most importantly the configure.php script... you had no chance! :) Also the majority of the HOWTO was written before our current build system (named PhD) existed. You'll see a few references to it but PhD is not well integrated within the HOWTO (yet) although for about a year now I've promised to rewrite the HOWTO. This kick in the pants helps but see also the following playground as it'll probably help you today: - http://wiki.php.net/doc/howto Thanks for the detailed and honest look, because it's very much appreciated and helpful! Regards, Philip