From: Jos Backus <jos@...>
Date: 2004-04-22T12:25:00+09:00
Subject: Re: how to get ri/rdoc working for 1.8.1 on Windows?

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 11:16:02AM +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:
> 
> On Apr 21, 2004, at 18:45, Jos Backus wrote:
> 
> >Perhaps Lothar meant to say that rdoc in the 1.8.1 distribution 
> >doesn't work,
> >and that he is wondering whether anybody has tried to run the latest 
> >rdoc from
> >CVS against a stock 1.8.1 install because the latest rdoc appears to 
> >work
> >fine?
> 
> The latest RDoc is part of the Ruby source distribution, and so you'd 
> have a newer version of Ruby lying around anyway... :)
 
Of course :) I was thinking along the lines of the minimum number of files
that would have to be updated in an existing 1.8.1 installation to make
rdoc/ri work. It turns out Lothar has his own distribution, which I wasn't
aware of.

> >It sure would be nice to see 1.8.2 be released soon, as this would 
> >give us
> >working online documentation (using rdoc/ri) on Unix at least.  
> >rdoc/ri in
> >1.8.1 is not even working there.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand this. On Unix, 1.8.1 and 1.9 both work just 
> fine: I use them every day. You just grab the latest, configure and 
> make install as normal, and RDoc is automatically run and the 
> documentation built.
 
I'm thinking of people who don't use CVS but package systems like, say, Cygwin
or the FreeBSD Ports collection. To verify, I just rebuilt 1.8.1 on FreeBSD
and get this error:

lizzy:/usr/local/src/ruby-1.8.1# rdoc -R
[snip]
                            array.c: 
Generating RI...
/tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:17:in `require': No such file to load -- yaml/parser (LoadError)
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/yaml.rb:17
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/ri/ri_descriptions.rb:1:in `require'
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/ri/ri_descriptions.rb:1
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/ri/ri_reader.rb:1:in `require'
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/ri/ri_reader.rb:1
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/generators/ri_generator.rb:46:in `require'
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/generators/ri_generator.rb:46
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/rdoc.rb:194:in `require'
        from /tmp/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/rdoc/rdoc.rb:194:in `document'
        from /tmp/ruby/bin/rdoc:63
lizzy:/usr/local/src/ruby-1.8.1# 

The same happens when using the FreeBSD port (obviously); CVS head otoh works
fine. So the moment a new stable release is available, places like the FreeBSD
Ports collection will be updated at some point and rdoc/ri will work.

> This is very frustrating for me. I understand there are problems with 
> how the Windows installer was built, and it looks like Curt is going to 
> sort that out. Of the stuff in my control, what needs to be done to get 
> rdoc/ri working for folks who can't currently use it?
 
Nothing, afaIac. It works fine for me. Thank you Dave :) And thanks to Curt et
al. for updating the installer!

> Cheers
> 
> Dave

Groetjes,
-- 
Jos Backus                       _/  _/_/_/      Sunnyvale, CA
                                _/  _/   _/
                               _/  _/_/_/
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jos at catnook.com        _/_/   _/_/_/          require 'std/disclaimer'