[libvirt-dbus PATCH 8/9] meson: Install documentation

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 04:16:57PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> Sorry, I only see these messages now, after having pushed already :(
> 
> On Mon, 2020-04-27 at 15:38 +0200, Pavel Hrdina wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 01:52:13PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > > On Sat, Apr 25, 2020 at 10:59:45PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> > > > People who install the RPM packages already get this, but it's
> > > > good practice so let's make it happen for those who install from
> > > > source as well.
> > > 
> > > Do we really want this ?  I've not noticed apps doing this in
> > > general - these files are usually non-installed with autotools
> > > and meson AFAIK.
> > 
> > It was probably my motivation not to install them in the first place as
> > well because the user already has the files from sources so there is
> > usually no need to install them.
> 
> One doesn't necessarily keep the source directory around after
> installing a piece or software, and the person installing it might
> be different from the one interested in looking at these files:
> think the user on a managed server curious about what features a
> newly-deployed version of some software introduces.
>
> > I've checked systemd and they are installing these files using meson but
> > GLib for example is not installing them.
> > 
> > After checking other libvirt projects we are not installing this files
> > using autotools or other build systems.
> 
> I can bring up another counter-example that's close to us: QEMU
> installs these files, along with a bunch of other documentation.

QEMU isn't a good example of best practice as it is a completely
custom written set of build system rules.  

> > Taking all of that into account I'm changing my mind and we should not
> > install these files from sources as well.
> 
> I still think it's a good idea.
> 
> The packaging for both Fedora and Debian go out of their way to
> include them, and at least for the latter it's strongly recommended
> by policy to include NEWS while including COPYING is mandatory.
> Clearly both projects consider this information important to users,
> and I don't see any disadvantage in installing them even for people
> who build from sources directly instead of using a package, only
> advantages really.

I think these are different situations though. Distro vendors include
the files because the end users don't have any direct visibility of
the source tarball. So the only way users would see the files is if
the binary packages included them. I don't think that extends to
building from source in general & don't see a need for us to do this
specially in the libvirt-dbus module, or indeed our other modules
in general.

Regards,
Daniel
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