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I've created a small bat files that mimics the Makefile in Docs/. It may
be useful for some Windows users.

See also Tools/buildbot/buildmsi.bat. With cygwin installed, building
the documentation is as simple as
bash.exe -c 'cd Doc;make PYTHON=python2.5 update htmlhelp'
"%ProgramFiles%\HTML Help Workshop\hhc.exe" Doc\build\htmlhelp\pydoc.hhp

I tested this out out in the trunk (59706). Placed builddoc.bat in /Doc
and ran the following commands:
builddoc checkout
builddoc html
builddoc htmlhelp
builddoc web
All appeared to work fine on my system.

This batch file is a good idea. I have two remarks:
- it assumes that the python program is spelled "python25".
This could be configurable. Something along:
 IF "%PYTHON%"=="" SET PYTHON=python25
Or is there a better way?
- Also, I suggest to insert a
 SETLOCAL
command on the second line of the script, so that the variables set in
the script are restored at the end.

Is referencing the built python binary in the build tree a good idea? 
Just in case they do not have python installed on the system already?

Joseph Armbruster wrote:
> Is referencing the built python binary in the build tree a good idea? 
> Just in case they do not have python installed on the system already?
The doc builder requires Python 2.5 and *may* work with 2.6 but
definitely not with 3.x.

Ah, good to know :-)

Christian Heimes schrieb:
> Christian Heimes added the comment:
> 
> Joseph Armbruster wrote:
>> Is referencing the built python binary in the build tree a good idea? 
>> Just in case they do not have python installed on the system already?
> 
> The doc builder requires Python 2.5 and *may* work with 2.6 but
> definitely not with 3.x.
It should work with 2.6 without problems.
3k compatibility is another story, of course :)

Which brings up a question. Would all things in the tree ideally work
with the version that was built from checkout? Just in case something
like this comes up in the future, i'd want to know if it is better to
have it configured as this or to auto-magically point to the "right
place" in the build tree for the python binary.
Curiosity more than anything.

Ideally, yes. The case of the doc build is a bit more complicated
because it relies on external libraries which may or may not work with
the tree version.

> Would all things in the tree ideally work
> with the version that was built from checkout?
It's more important that it works with many old versions,
than with its own version. "python" should be on the path,
and ideally, whatever you get there should work.
The documentation, unfortunately, requires 2.5 as a minimum.
It should stay that way for a long time, so that at some
point, it works with whatever people typically have on their
machines.

FTR, I'm currently removing all 2.5isms from Sphinx.

I've implemented Amaury's suggestions and also added a call to hhc.exe
if the target is htmlhelp. The files was added in r60048