Bug 224627

Summary:	dev-lang/ghc-6.8.2: Why is the haddock documentation not re-built?
Product:	Gentoo Linux	Reporter:	Peter Simons <simons>
Component:	New packages	Assignee:	Gentoo's Haskell Language team <haskell>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID
Severity:	normal
Priority:	High
Version:	unspecified
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Package list:		Runtime testing required:	---

Description Peter Simons 2008-06-02 16:25:24 UTC

I installed ghc-6.8.2 with USE=doc, but apparently the ebuild does not rebuild the haddock documentation. It certainly does not rebuild the haddock interface files, because those files have a timestamp from back in December although I installed them 30 minutes ago:

 peti:~$ cd /usr/share/doc/ghc-6.8.2/libraries/base/
 peti:/usr/share/doc/ghc-6.8.2/libraries/base$ ls -l base.haddock 
 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 258712 Dec 14 11:12 base.haddock

Is there a reason for this? I wonder because those interface files have been compiled with a rather old version of haddock, so they are incompatible to the ones generated by the version I have installed. If those files would be re-built with whatever haddock version is found on the system, this wouldn't be an issue.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Jeroen Roovers (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2008-06-02 16:56:19 UTC

What USE flags have been set (USE=ghcbootstrap particularly)? Your `emerge --info' and `emerge -vp ghc', please.

Comment 2 Lennart Kolmodin (RETIRED) gentoo-dev

2008-06-03 05:46:44 UTC

If the USE=binary flag is set the installation will simply unpack and install without compiling or rebuilding anything. Did you use this? If so, try to build with USE="doc -binary" and report back, please.

USE=ghcbootstrap is only used to make new ghc-bin packages, but I don't think you used it.

Comment 3 Peter Simons 2008-06-04 18:27:50 UTC

Hey, thanks for the quick responses! I re-emerged dev-lang/ghc with USE=ghcbootstrap, which hadn't been set previously, and that did the trick. This time, the haddock interface files have been re-built. It never occurred to me to try this flag, because I associated the name "ghc bootstrapping" with the bootstrapping procedure GHC uses when it's being ported to new architectures, which is a really low-level thing, but apparently that's not what this flag is about.

The key to everything are the following lines in the ebuild:

	if use ghcbootstrap && use doc; then
		echo XMLDocWays="html" >> mk/build.mk
		echo HADDOCK_DOCS=YES >> mk/build.mk
	else
		echo XMLDocWays="" >> mk/build.mk
	fi

I'm not sure that's the best way to handle the situation. Apparently, the ebuild doesn't want to depend on Haddock unless the bootstrap flag is set. I feel that's sensible, but I also believe that the ebuild should take advantage of Haddock if it _is_ installed. If nothing else, the ebuild should issue a warning when it finds an installed haddock version that differs from the version that was used to build the binary package -- i.e. any version other than haddock 0.8 in our case.

Anyway, I'm glad that the problem was that simple to fix. ;-) Thanks again for helping me out.