Re: documentation is now XML

On 04/27/2018 06:36 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> writes:

On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 11:00:36AM -0400, Peter Eisentraut wrote:

That proposal seemed to indicate not only converting the source code to
XML but also the build system to XSL.  The latter is out of the
question, I think.

Why is that?  I thought people building current Postgres would already
have the XML toolchain built to build older release documentation.

Yeah, in principle, anyone who's able to build the v10 branch's docs
should be ready for such a change.  We had discussed polling the
pgsql-packagers list to see whether anyone would have a problem with
changing the docs build toolset for the pre-v10 branches, but I don't
think we actually asked them.
		regards, tom lane

To complete the picture of possible issues with older branches in XML, we posted a question in packager lists some time ago and didn't receive any objections. Just to keep record of all related questions in one place, here's the link:

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/06efc906-16f8-0cde-5bee-e3d5abfc00ba%40postgrespro.ru#06efc906-16f8-0cde-5bee-e3d5abfc00ba@postgrespro.ru

We totally understand the reluctance to volunteer personal time for manual testing of legacy branches - sad as it is that we may miss some benefits of the previous efforts. E.g. all styles and transforms have been stabilized for version 11, so they could be reused for older branches. As for testing the content conversion, our scripts can handle it in a fully automated way by comparing the original and the final outputs via the .txt format, so all possible differences will be caught.
It's unfortunate that we'll have to deal with different formats in the supported branches for several more years, but we at Postgres Professional are ready to accept any your decision on this matter for now.

-- 
Liudmila Mantrova
Technical writer at Postgres Professional: http://www.postgrespro.com
The Russian Postgres Company