First off, it's really nice to see a bit of doc on this. Good work!

refdoc builds the reference documentation for the module by extracting it from the module source. The system module reference is then rebuilt to include the new module documentaion.

Is it possible to build the docs for the module only, without merging it with the system docs?

Pike modules can consist of zero or more pike language files, plus a shared object built from one or more c language files, /.../

What about pike only modules? Should be trivial, but it'd still be nice if they too are covered by the standard tools so that they can be handled the same way. Maybe it works to provide a standard Makefile for that case, so that not even autoconf is required.

AC_INIT(module.pmod.in)

Doesn't work for modules with no pike layer. Also, the check works better if it's a file which is very specific for the module.

Btw, you seem to assume that there always should be a pike glue file like that. Is it really necessary?

VPATH=@srcdir@:@srcdir@/../..:../..

It should be enough with "VPATH=@srcdir@". (A while ago I cleaned up a lot of vpaths like that in the module tree - seems to have been a bad case of cut'n'paste back to very old code.)

This sample code does 2 things: first, it verifies that there is a module called "Protocols.BEEP.client", and second, if that is true, /.../

A bit odd example. In the testsuite for a specific module, isn't it better to assume it exists? If there has been some major problem so that the module isn't installed at all, one wouldn't expect it to silently pass the testsuite.

/ Martin Stjernholm, Roxen IS

Previous text:

2003-11-10 18:52: Subject: pike external module documentation

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I've started the first draft of a document describing how to build modules outside of the pike source tree.

Keeping in mind it's only about 45 minutes old, please take a look at it and let me know if there are any corrections or additions to it at this point. I've not gotten into any of the goodies about the module repository, but that will come soon enough. I think the only requriements that should happen from that standpoint would be a recommendation that a constant __version should be placed in the class of the module, and that the module distribution directory be saved as FullModuleName-ver.

https://steam.iaeste.at/home/Pike%20Community/tutorials/External%20Modules/

Note that there is both a HTML version and a StarWriter version. If anyone wants to make changes, at this point, please make them to the SW version (or just send me your updates).

As always, comments, suggestions and donations of time from technical writing enthusiasts are welcome!

Bill

/ Brevbäraren