Xapian Python bindings should not depend on Python-sphinx

[Jorge]

Installation of Xapian bindings for Python, both 1.3.7 and 1.4.1, require Sphinx. IMO this should not be required as it is only used to build documentation. IMO building Sphinx documentation should not be a requirement for installing Xapian bindings.

Here is a build that fails because Sphinx is required (on Travis CI): ​https://api.travis-ci.org/jobs/171596807/log.txt?deansi=true , line before "Testing Xapian..." in the last lines

This particular build is from "xapian-haystack" that uses Xapian bindings for Python. We are trying to upgrade to latest Xapian and this has hit us.

Is there any reason for having Bindings' installation to depend on building documentation?

[Olly Betts]

We used to ship the generated documentation, but (a) it's enormous and (b) it includes a load of minified javascript code without corresponding source, so we switched to having the docs generated at build time.

I'm reluctant to support installing without documentation as it means another build variant to have to test, and that people can easily end up not installing the documentation and then thinking there's no documentation. Sphinx doesn't seem a very onerous build dependency - is there a problem with just adding it to the CI config?

Or if the cost of the CI build is a concern to you, why build xapian-bindings from source every time? There are backported 1.4.x packages in a PPA here: ​https://launchpad.net/~xapian-backports/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

[Olly Betts]

I think this is unfortunately one of those cases where any choice has its own pros and cons, and we were aware of that when we made the current choice as the best overall compromise.

No feedback from submitter for 4 weeks in response to my earlier comment, so closing.