Re: [boost] ATTENTION: Library requirements..

Subject: Re: [boost] ATTENTION: Library requirements..
From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-01-10 05:18:53

On 2016-01-10 12:40, Peter Dimov wrote:
> Robert Ramey wrote:
>> > Committing pre-generated documentation is a big no-no, at least for me.
>>
>> I'm aware that doing so is redundant.  BUT it provides anyone who
>> want's to browse boost just to do so directly, without building anything.
>
> Yes. In addition, if we at some unspecified future point do switch to
> modular releases, it will be much easier to do them if the documentation
> for a library is included in its checkout.

I don't think so. And I don't think that the checked out source have to 
be equivalent to the released archives.

The source code in git is for developers. Its layout and content should 
make it easy for contributors to make changes to the code (and docs), 
and stroing auto-generated docs in git only complicates that.

The distributed archives are for users. They are geared towards using 
the library, and the auto-generated docs are appropriate there. Although 
given that the docs are viewable online, I wouldn't say they are 
necessary in the archive.

I would argue that the downloadable docs should be distributed 
separately from the main source, as they are rarely used but add a lot 
of overhead. A simple example. I've built Ubuntu packages for Boost 
1.60. All the development packages (headers, binaries, debug symbols) 
weigh about 65 MiB (and about 14 MiB without the debug symbols). The 
docs package alone (with the built docs for all librarues) weighs about 
48 MiB. So the docs consume >40% of the total size of the distributed Boost.