Install manpages via make install, also add some autogenerated manpages #8608

Normally we use --disable-* for the help for options which are enabled by default.

Makes sense after looking at the other configure options. Would this be better:

+    [AS_HELP_STRING([--disable-man],
+                    [do not install man pages (default is to install)])],,

And should I remove "# Enable manpages" comment? only --disable-wallet and --debug has a comment everything else doesn't.

Sounds good to me

(I wonder if it should perhaps be disabled by default when building for Windows?)

Should probably mention the relevant binaries need to be in PATH, adjust it so the BITCOIND and/or BITCOINCLI environment variables are used, and/or just use the binaries in the build dir.

Hmm, the script was already a bit ugly, but it was very short which was the good thing about it :) Would you like something like this better: http://pastebin.com/j6JFaiaq

Or I could leave it like it is and write:

A small script to automatically create manpages in ../../doc/man by running binaries in $PATH with the --help option.

Why not use a makefile target instead? All of that info would be readily available there.

Why not use a makefile target instead? All of that info would be readily available there.

Do you mean something like this where it fills in some stuff in the script, or do you mean integrating help2man into the make buildprocess?

Because you can do this: https://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/#Makefile-usage until 5 minutes ago I assumed everyone building from source then needs help2man installed, but this sentence suggest otherwise:

This usage allows a manual page to be generated by the maintainer and included in the distribution without requiring the end-user to have help2man installed.

Now I am a bit confused :) Guess this needs more research.

@theuni I am playing around right now with the help2man Makefile method and it seems it indeed only runs help2man: if the manpage files don't exist yet OR a string in the source cpp file changed (I have no idea how it does this - blackmagic?).

So if the man pages exist and the help options matches the source files, the end user can build without having help2man installed. If this confirms it seems much better than the shell script...

But it has some side effects, now the commit id is back in the manpage. And some other small problem which my script was working around (matching copyright footer for all manpages)

@nomnombtc I think they're just saying that if you commit pre-generated files to the repo, users don't have to do it.

For a makefile target, i mean something like this: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/Makefile.qt.include#L408

In this case, it would look something like (in src/Makefile.am):

update-man: $(bin_PROGRAMS)
       $(AM_V_at)echo "[COPYRIGHT]" > footer.h2m
       $(AM_V_at)echo "Copyright $(COPYRIGHT_YEAR) $(COPYRIGHT_HOLDERS_FINAL)" >> footer.h2m
       $(AM_V_at)for prog in $^; do help2man -N --version-string=$(PACKAGE_VERSION) --include=footer.h2m -o $(top_builddir)/doc/man/`basename $$prog`.1 $(builddir)/$$prog$(EXEEXT); done

(that's not really tested)

Since it's in a makefile, you have all of the vars at your disposal without trying to guess program names/paths.

@theuni

Oh ok now I get it, I was playing around with something like this:

bitcoind.1: $(top_builddir)/src/bitcoind.cpp
        -$(HELP2MAN) --no-info --version-string=$(PACKAGE_VERSION) \
          --output=$@ --name='manual page for $(BITCOIN_DAEMON_NAME) $(PACKAGE_VERSION)' \
          $(top_builddir)/src/$(BITCOIN_DAEMON_NAME)$(EXEEXT)
        -sed -i 's/\-$(shell git rev-parse HEAD | cut -c1-7)//g' $@

bitcoin-cli.1: $(top_builddir)/src/bitcoin-cli.cpp
        -$(HELP2MAN) --no-info --version-string=$(PACKAGE_VERSION) \
          --output=$@ --name='manual page for $(BITCOIN_CLI_NAME) $(PACKAGE_VERSION)' \
          $(top_builddir)/src/$(BITCOIN_CLI_NAME)$(EXEEXT)
        -sed -i 's/\-$(shell git rev-parse HEAD | cut -c1-7)//g' $@

bitcoin-tx.1: $(top_builddir)/src/bitcoin-tx.cpp
        -$(HELP2MAN) --no-info --version-string=$(PACKAGE_VERSION) \
          --output=$@ --name='manual page for $(BITCOIN_TX_NAME) $(PACKAGE_VERSION)' \
          $(top_builddir)/src/$(BITCOIN_TX_NAME)$(EXEEXT)
        -sed -i 's/\-$(shell git rev-parse HEAD | cut -c1-7)//g' $@

dist_man1_MANS=bitcoind.1 bitcoin-cli.1 bitcoin-tx.1

if ENABLE_QT
bitcoin-qt.1: $(top_builddir)/src/qt/bitcoin.cpp
        -$(HELP2MAN) --no-info --version-string=$(PACKAGE_VERSION) \
          --output=$@ --name='manual page for $(BITCOIN_GUI_NAME) $(PACKAGE_VERSION)' \
          $(top_builddir)/src/qt/$(BITCOIN_GUI_NAME)$(EXEEXT)
        -sed -i 's/\-$(shell git rev-parse HEAD | cut -c1-7)//g' $@
dist_man1_MANS+=bitcoin-qt.1
endif

Because my hope was to automate it completly, so that maybe the gitian build process generates the manpages in the end.It works pretty ok, but a huge problem is that running help2man on bitcoin-qt needs access to a running X-Server -_-.

So someone needs to generate and commit the manpages anyway. May as well then use something like your maketarget, at least this is much more elegant than my shell script... :)

Going to look into it, thanks!