RFE: spec housekeeping: eliminate book subdirectory

[reply] [-] Description Mats Wichmann 2012-11-14 15:09:55 UTC
At one time, built specifications happened in the same tree as the spec was
kept. This has not been the case for a while now. But there is one remnant.
sgml entities are defined for the various spec components which will go into
books. sometimes, several entities are used in a book. these can be defined
directly in the book build area (e.g.
booksets/LSB-Core-generic/LSB-Core-generic.spec.sed defines itself as being;

&lsb-generic-intro;
<PART ID=ELF-GENERIC>
<TITLE>Executable And Linking Format (ELF)</TITLE>
&elf-intro;
&elf-contents;
&elf-generic-cxx;
</PART>
&lsb-generic-baselib;
&lsb-generic-utillib;
&lsb-generic-cxxlib;
&security-nsslib;
&lsb-generic-command;
&lsb-generic-execenv;
&lsb-generic-sysinit;
&lsb-generic-usersgroups;
&packaging-contents;
&lsb-generic-appA;
<!-- &lsb-generic-appB; -->
&license;

The oddity here are lsb-contents, elf-contents and packaging-contents. the are
defined not in the main lsbspec entity file, but in this file itself, thus:

<!ENTITY elf-contents SYSTEM "SPECSRC/book/ELF-generic/contents">
<!ENTITY lsb-contents SYSTEM "SPECSRC/book/LSB-generic/contents">
<!ENTITY packaging-contents SYSTEM "SPECSRC/book/Packaging-generic/contents">

That is, we have an indirect reference to the book subirectory where some files
named contents live.

$ cat ELF-generic/contents
&elf-generic-low-level;
&elf-generic-obj-format;
&elf-generic-dyn-linking;

Proposing that these files, all that are left of the old in-tree build, move to
one of two places where they would be easier to find. It seems each time
there's a substantive change, the stuff in the mostly-dead book directory gets
forgotten for update.

Since ELF and Packaging and LSB exist as subdirs in lsbspec in their own right,
why not put them there? Or alternatively, why not put contents files in the
book directories where they are built? In either case they'd be closer to
where they are needed.

It doesn't block anything to not make this change, just filing to record
something that might make things a little easier to maintain going forward.