GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 407615
omf.make does not respect --disable-scrollkeeper
Last modified: 2015-01-26 15:27:32 UTC
Please describe the problem: gnome-common includes a makefile snippet called omf.make which is used to generate and install .omf files. In the install-data-hook-omf and uninstall-local-omf targets, it calls scrollkeeper-update, which modifies the installed scrollkeeper database. While this is OK for regular installations, it is a problem when building packages via DESTDIR (as used by Debian and RPM packaging) because it will create an unwanted scrollkeeper database in DESTDIR. For that reason, gnome-doc-utils introduced an automake conditional named ENABLE_SK. It is accessed from $(datadir)/aclocal/gnome-doc-utils.m4 and adds a --disable-scrollkeeper option to configure. The problem is that it never works for packages that use omf.make because omf.make does not use it. Steps to reproduce: 1. get an tarball of an arbitrary GNOME package, e.g. gnome-applets 2. ./configure --disable-scrollkeeper 3. make ; make install DESTDIR=`pwd` Actual results: A scrollkeeper database is created in $DESTDIR/$(localstatedir). Expected results: No such scrollkeeper database is created. Does this happen every time? Yes Other information: Packagers are frequently using "rm -rf" workarounds, see http://www.google.com/search?q="rm+-rf"+scrollkeeper
Created attachment 82490 [details] [review] Possible patch Note that I do _not_ know whether this is the correct fix. The problem is that the ENABLE_SK conditional comes from gnome-doc-utils, so omf.make effectively becomes dependent on gnome-doc-utils usage and I do not know whether this is acceptable. Coordination with gnome-doc-utils might be necessary.
I don't think this patch is right, since it requires that gnome-doc-utils be used so the ENABLE_SK automake conditional is defined. omf.make is only copied into the build if you use gnome-doc-common (usually via USE_COMMON_DOC_BUILD=1 with gnome-autogen.sh). Since this is all deprecated by gnome-doc-utils, maybe we should just make gdu ship its own omf.make fragment (or directly into g-d-u.make) ?
It seems g-d-u has its own omf make rules, and omf.make is only used by the obsolete non-g-d-u docs. Can we WONTFIX this now?
omf.make and gnome-doc-utils is now gone from gnome-common, so this is obsolete.