URL: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68564>
Summary: support cross-compilation
Group: GNU roff
Submitter: gbranden
Submitted: Sat 25 Jul 2026 07:18:11 PM UTC
Category: General
Severity: 1 - Wish
Item Group: Build/Installation
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: None
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Unlocked
Planned Release: None
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Follow-up Comments:
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Date: Sat 25 Jul 2026 07:18:11 PM UTC By: G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-07/msg00018.html Phong wrote]:
Speaking of cross compilation, it has been broken since at most 1.24
as pdfmom used to build doc/automake.pdf uses test-groff
instead of GROFFBIN, I think:
$ make GROFF_BIN_PATH=... GROFFBIN=.../bin/groff
...
GROFF doc/automake.pdf
sh: line 1: test-groff: command not found
pdfmom: fatal error: test-groff exited with status 127
make[2]: *** [Makefile:19211: doc/automake.pdf] Error 1
...
$ grep -r -B1 -A3 GROFF_COMMAND=test-groff
contrib/mom/mom.am-MOMPDFMOM = \
contrib/mom/mom.am: GROFF_COMMAND=test-groff \
contrib/mom/mom.am- GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX= \
contrib/mom/mom.am- GROFF_BIN_PATH="$(GROFF_BIN_PATH)" \
contrib/mom/mom.am- $(PDFMOMBIN) $(FFLAG) $(MFLAG) -M$(mom_srcdir) -K
utf8
-p -e -t \
--
doc/doc.am-DOC_PDFMOM = \
doc/doc.am: GROFF_COMMAND=test-groff \
doc/doc.am- GROFF_COMMAND_PREFIX= \
doc/doc.am- GROFF_BIN_PATH="$(GROFF_BIN_PATH)" \
doc/doc.am- $(PDFMOMBIN) $(MFLAG) $(FFLAG) -ww -b $(pdfmomoption) --roff
[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-07/msg00019.html I replied]:
Yes. Unfortunately the more places we interpose pdfmom in front of
groff, the more problems like this we have.
But if you're going to have forward references, there seems to be no
alternative at present. It's not even a new problem; see mmroff(1).
...
pdfmom(1) is growing increasingly poorly named in any event; it need not
format a mom(7) document, and the problem of forward references does not
uniquely afflict PDF generation, either.
Maybe we should reconsider the tool's scope and purpose, rename it, say,
"regroff", and supply a "test-regroff" script, generated at
configuration time as "test-groff" is.
(Once upon a time, Bjarni lobbied for a "test-nroff" script, but found
no one to second his motion.)
I'd like to avoid doing what TeX does (or what its usual front-end
does), and do what appears to be multi-pass formatting even when it's
not necessary. Or maybe it _doesn't_ apply multiple passes
unnecessarily, but its ordinary operation is so garrulous that I
struggle to tell the difference.
In the short term, if "automake.mom" doesn't actually need multi-pass
formatting, then we should move it back to `GROFFBIN`. I don't see any
forward references; the relocated table of contents in the PDF rendering
doesn't count, because that's achieved by PDF-level page resequencing
magic.
Updating "automake.pdf" generation might be low-hanging fruit we can do for
_groff_ 1.25.0.
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