Hi Alex, At 2023-08-12T02:02:49+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > On 2023-08-07 18:21, Brian Inglis wrote: > >>> $ pwd > >>> /home/alx/src/linux/man-pages/man-pages/6.04/scripts/LinuxManBook > >>> $ ./BuildLinuxMan.pl ../../ > >>> [...] > >>> Failed to open 'DESC' > > > > That annoyingly minimal message provoked the patch submitted. > > Yeah; it took me some time to find the cause. The error message > doesn't even tell who failed --was it the shell, was it gropdf, was it > troff?--. > > :) This sort of thing makes me purple with rage and I have tried to purge groff of such unhelpful diagnostics--especially those that are uttered furtively by programs (or, worse, libraries) that attempt to remain anonymous. Doug McIlroy was telling people to cut this crap out in 1986 (or maybe a decade before that, even) and people _still_ ignore him. https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/reader.pdf (p. 9) Much work was done on groff 1.23 to fix this, but I'm not certain all such offenders have been rehabilitated. https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?52463 When you encounter one, strike it with lightning. Regards, Branden
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