Re: doc-base control file madness
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 17:18:21 +0000 (GMT), Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk> said:
> On 21 Jan 1999, Ben Gertzfield wrote:
>> >>>>> "Dale" == Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net> writes:
Ben> I've recently looked into the doc-base control file format. It
Ben> seems pretty sane, except I realized since it does not provide
Ben> for any macro expansion,
Dale> Can't you use something like m4 as a pre-processor and do macro
Dale> expansion that way?
>> That would work, but it would be nice if it were built into the
>> control file language. Many people will need this functionality in
>> the future.
> In general, it is IMHO silly to rewrite, yet again, a macro
> substitution engine into a special purpose piece of software
> (doc-base) when we already have several good, fast macro
> substituters (cpp, m4) and a framework from which they can easily be
> run (debian/rules).
Utterly agree. To prove it, I'm going to quote my docreg file which
uses m4:
changequote([, ])dnl
define([common_elements], [Title: Debian Metadata Manual
Subject: debian/policy
Description: This manual contains a guide and a reference to the
Debian Metadata Project. The Project's purpose, and the purpose of
this document, is to outline a set of metadata elements, to specify
an interface for package maintainers use in order to provide
metadata about resources in their packages, to specify a unified
subject catalog for categorizing metadata, and to specify an API for
developers who wish to make use of a system's metadata.
Language: en
Creator: A. P. Harris <aph@debian.org>
Creator: Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
Date: 1998-06-29
Rights: copyright/GPL
Type: specification])dnl
Identifier: debian-metadata/debian-metadata.sgml
Format: text/sgml
common_elements
Identifier: debian-metadata/debian-metadata.html/index.html
Format: text/html
common_elements
Identifier: debian-metadata/debian-metadata.text
Format: text/plain
common_elements
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