Follow-up Comment #1, bug #68525 (group groff): At 2026-07-13T22:12:05-0400, Dave wrote: > Date: Mon 13 Jul 2026 09:12:02 PM CDT By: Dave <barx> > My July 10 groff build from then-latest git source did not run to > completion. It built a functional groff (with which I discovered bug > #68510, bug #68511, and bug #68524), but the documentation part of the > build failed as follows. > > GEN font/devlj4/DESC > GROFF doc/webpage.html > pre-grohtml: fatal error: 'pre-grohtml' exited with status 4; re-run > with a different output driver to see diagnostic messages > make[2]: *** [Makefile:19691: doc/webpage.html] Error 4
My heart always sinks when I see that in one of my builds.
> I thought that somewhere the build generated a log I could check to
> see what actual command was being run to build doc/webpage.html,
Nope, but you can likely do this (modulus your selection of build
directory):
$ make -C build V=1
> but I couldn't find it, so I'm posting here to get advice on the next
> steps I should take to find out what went wrong.
More often than not, pre-grohtml(1) fails because the troff(1) it runs
fails, and troff(1) fails because of some fatal problem that has nothing
specific to do with HTML support.
But the fact that pre-grohtml(1) always swiftly has deep cleaners on
site to sanitize the crime scene of all evidence is one of a few reasons
I want to kill that preprocessor off in the long term.
Since we have no HTML-only docs, another technique is to steer make(1)
toward building a non-HTML counterpart of the document.
$ make -C build V=1 doc/webpage.ps
Let me know if this helps, or doesn't.
_______________________________________________________
Reply to this item at:
<https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68525>
_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
