Server Guide PDF

[Matthew East]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Adam Sommer <asommer70 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I wanted to get some feedback for a patch I've worked up that will re-enable
> creating a PDF file for the Server Guide.  I say "re-enable" because most of
> the code in the Makefile is already there, it just needed a little
> tweaking.  There has been multiple instances of user's requesting a PDF
> version of the Server Guide, and the rest of the Ubuntu docs for that
> matter.  It was on my list for Intrepid, but I didn't get around to working
> on it.
>
> Anyway, attached is a patch for the Makefile and debian/rules to create the
> PDF file.  If there is any way the code can be improved please let me know.

The changes to the Makefile look ok to me, but the changes to the
packaging in debian/rules don't look to me like they will work. You
haven't included any scope in the packaging for installing the build
dependencies required to generate the pdf. In any event, I don't think
it can or should be done because:

1. fop is required so that will pull in large build dependencies into
ubuntu-docs in order to build the package (java etc)
2. latest fop is required and there is no way to install that on the buildds
3. I vaguely recollect that in order to build the PDF, a headless
server (i.e. a server without a desktop environment) will not work
because of something to do with the image libraries used.

To be honest, I don't really see the point in including a PDF in the
ubuntu-serverguide package anyway, because Ubuntu Server doesn't come
with a pdf viewer, does it?

In sum, I'm happy to release a pdf for the serverguide and to put it
on help.ubuntu.com, as indeed we have done in the past, but I think
you should revert your changes to debian/rules.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF