Re: C--

[Sascha Wildner <saw@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chris Turner wrote:
> Simon corecode Schubert wrote:
> > However, there won't be any C++ in the list of things to do.  The only thing
> > which uses C++ in DragonFly is groff, and I would be happier without this.
>
> was just thinking about this issue - any thoughts about:
>
>   http://heirloom.sourceforge.net/doctools.html

Well, I looked into this and the problem seems to get our mdoc working 
with heirloom-doctools. The package itself comes with the "old" mdoc 
macros which lack certain features our manual pages need. Those are in 
the "new" mdoc which we have and which depends on certain groff-specific 
features, as it seems.

There is a groff compatibility mode (add -mg to the command line) in the 
heirloom troff but despite me trying for some time, I couldn't get it to 
render our manpages cleanly.

We could, of course, revert to the old mdoc macros which would mean that 
we'd have to adjust our manpages to not use the features of the new 
macros. It could certainly be done, but I fear that it will be a hassle 
to maintain (given that we import manpages from the other BSDs regularly 
and would have to adjust them too etc.). It could be done I think, 
although I'm not sure if I wanted to do it. :)

OpenBSD seems to use the old macros (with some enhancements), while 
NetBSD and FreeBSD use the new macros. MirOS, by the way, seems to have 
the "best" implementation of the old macros (i.e., theirs gave the 
fewest warnings).

So... I'm kinda unsure here if the perspective of being able to remove 
C++ from the build justifies reverting to the old mdoc macros. What do 
the rest of you think?

Sascha

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