Sunday, July 25, 2010

Building git documentation on cygwin

I had some trouble building the git documentation under cygwin. The issue is apparently that on cygwin the xmlcatalog is not set up to allow offline builds. In my case, my cygwin install was missing an /etc/xml/catalog file. The simplest fix in this case is to create a this file manually:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC 
   "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN" 
   "http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd"
>
<catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">
  <rewriteURI 
     uriStartString = "http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current" 
     rewritePrefix = "/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets"
  />
  <rewriteURI 
     uriStartString="http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5" 
     rewritePrefix="/usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5"
  />
</catalog>
Alternatively, you can update an existing file with:
xmlcatalog --noout \
   --add rewriteURI \
        http://docbook.sourceforge.net/release/xsl/current \
        /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xsl-stylesheets \
   /etc/xml/catalog
xmlcatalog --noout \
   --add rewriteURI \
         http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/xsl/current \
         /usr/share/sgml/docbook/xml-dtd-4.5 \
   /etc/xml/catalog

Greenberg

After work this evening I decided to head up to the Cricketers' Arms to get some dinner and play some pool. Unfortunately the pool table was out of order, so I settled for dinner, some free AC power and some diddling with my git wrappers.

Then it occurred to me that it might fun to go to the Verona and see a film. Inception looked like the kind of film I like, but it was sold out so instead I elected to see Greenberg, a film I knew nothing about other than the poster I had seen on Friday which told me that it starred Ben Stiller. So, I thought it would be a light-hearted comedy.

Boy, was I wrong. It turned out to be about a narcissistic (tick) 40-something (tick) single guy (tick) with anger control issues (tick). The character doesn't drive (tick), takes pleasure in writing letters of complaint (tick) and is not troubled by the conventional pressure to succeed (tick).

It almost could have been about me, except for one thing (did I say the guy was narcissistic?) - the guy couldn't swim to save his life.