devel/doxygen woes

[Kurt Jaeger]

Hi!

> So I've been getting a lot of issues being directed at me due to the 
> recent devel/doxygen update to 1.8.7. While I'm not sure why these 
> issues only cropped up after that update and not before, I would like to 
> try addressing a few things.

Those discussions always pop up if something changes, even if it is not
related 8-}

> doxygen has a bit of an issue in that it uses itself to build its own 
> documentation.

Let me state this a bit more general:

doxygen has the issue that if you use it, it brings in a huge
amount of dependencies. And currently, this process is not
thought-through.

> As a result of this, the HTMLDOCS and PDFDOCS options 
> will only pull in what is needed to allow doxygen to be built in such a 
> way to be able to build its own documentation. Because of this, if those 
> options are left out, then doxygen will be left in a state where it can 
> no longer build HTML docs fully (because of the lack of graphviz) and 
> cannot build PDF docs (because of the lack of a LaTeX distribution).

What might be a use case for doxygen, if it is not used for html
and pdf docs ? What other formats are supported ?

> Because of this, consumers of doxygen, whether they be other FreeBSD 
> ports or just users of doxygen in general, would need to have graphviz 
> and LaTeX installed to get all of doxygen's features. I recently had 
> someone that wanted to build doxygen without the LaTeX dependency, 
> though. So I think ideally, the dependencies for graphviz and LaTeX 
> should becomes separate options, and the HTMLDOCS and PDFDOCS options 
> should only be allowed if graphviz and LaTeX, respectively, are enabled.

The problem is: If a port has options to use doxygen, those
options should also include BUILD_DEPENDS for graphviz etc.
The ports that use doxygen normally do not know about those
BUILD_DEPENDS.

One idea was to provide a /usr/ports/Mk/Uses/doxygen.mk which
provides the necessary "glue" by USES += doxygen.

> All in all, it basically boils down to needing to find a way to include 
> graphviz and LaTeX in a way that doesn't cause too many problems but 
> also allows doxygen to still have the option of building its own 
> documentation.

It's either in or out 8-}

-- 
pi at opsec.eu            +49 171 3101372                         6 years to go !