Helpfiles again (was Re: modify functions hierarchy (was: etc.))

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Nov 23,  5:48pm, Peter Stephenson wrote:
} Subject: Re: modify functions hierarchy (was: Install run-help and *.zwc f
}
} On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:01:00 -0800
} Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> wrote:
} > Er, this patch doesn't actually have anything to do with generating the
} > helpfiles ... this is creating run-help and _run-help ...
} 
} Generating helpfiles doesn't, so far as I can see, involve substituting
} anything within the file, or this is there some further issue?

No, it was just that the bit of my previous email which you excerpted
(and now removed) was about the helpfiles, so I was momentarily confused
when the patch that was appended was about something else.

Now that you mention it, though, I'm not entirely happy with the way the
dependencies for rebuilding the helpfiles are arranged.  It looks like
it's going to a lot of effort to avoid running Util/helpfiles if the
$(runhelpdir) is not defined, at the expense of possibly not rebuilding
the help files when zshbuiltins.1 has changed.  Why do we care at this
point whether $(runhelpdir) is defined?  Isn't the following better?

diff --git a/Doc/Makefile.in b/Doc/Makefile.in
index eae3301..8c45615 100644
--- a/Doc/Makefile.in
+++ b/Doc/Makefile.in
@@ -184,13 +184,14 @@ $(sdir)/zsh.texi: $(YODLSRC)
 man: $(MAN)
 .PHONY: man
 
-runhelp: man
-	test x"$(runhelpdir)" = x"" || { \
-	    test -r $(sdir)/help.txt && test -r $(sdir)/help/ztcp; \
-	} || perl $(sdir_top)/Util/helpfiles \
+runhelp: help.txt
+.PHONY: runhelp
+
+help.txt: zshbuiltins.1
+	@-rm -f $(sdir)/help.txt $(sdir)/help/*
+	perl $(sdir_top)/Util/helpfiles \
 	    $(sdir)/zshbuiltins.1 $(sdir)/help $(sdir)/help.txt \
 	    || { rm -f $(sdir)/help.txt $(sdir)/help/*; false; }
-.PHONY: runhelp
 
 $(MAN): zmacros.yo zman.yo