[erlang-questions] yet more ranting about Erlang docs

[Björn Gustavsson]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Michael Turner <leap@REDACTED> wrote:

> Yeah, I know.  At the moment, on my way to trying to patch some docs,
> I'm watching something called megaco take forever to build.  I have no
> interest at all in megaco.  It's not remotely relevant to my immediate
> problem.  I'm just rebuilding everything from scratch because a "make
> release_docs" failed, saying it didn't have something called
> "docb_transform", which (I had to figure out) is written in Erlang.
> I'm hoping that rebuilding everything gets docb_transform installed in
> the right place.

Which version do you try to build? R13B03 or the latest on the
ccase/r13b04_dev branch in git repository?

Building in the git repository should now work. The description
is here:

http://wiki.github.com/erlang/otp/documentation

> But the dependencies of components on tools getting
> moved to the right places aren't reliable in the Erlang build system,
> in my experience.

That's it because we have always used Clearcase and Clearmake,
that handle most dependencies automatically. We will starting
working on updating the Makefiles to have the necessary
dependencies. (Patches accepted.)

> I like the idea.  But basically, Ericsson owns Erlang/OTP in every
> meaningful sense of the term.  They just let us look at, and dink around
> with, their code.  They don't even release their test suites, and
> without those, nobody can realistically hope to take an independent
> direction with the system.

We are gradually adding the test suites to the git repository.
There are now test suites for more than 20 applications
(including erts, kernel, stdlib, compiler) and more to come. They
will also be included in the R13B04 source release.

-- 
Björn Gustavsson, Erlang/OTP, Ericsson AB