TEIC
add more initial config checks to the Makefile
This is a low-priority request for more checks added to the top of the Makefile, as a user-friendly gesture.
Minimally, checks for trang, ant and xelatex would be nice to have, maybe along with java -version for information (it was relevant for some ant-related issues, I recall).
(Context: I have reinstalled Linux from scratch and I'm in the process of restoring my project directories from backups, and in the case of Stylesheets, it involved recompilation, which proceeds hickup-by-hickup, as I discover the tools still missing from the system and install them, one by one; sometimes the discovery process involves back-scrolling through pagefuls of output, looking for "BUILD FAILED" or error traces and I can imagine new users getting frustrated at this point -- or worse: repeatedly posting issues here ;-))
The absence of Xelatex only causes the LaTeX parts of builds to fail, without failing the whole operation; that's correct, I think, since many people have no interest in it and the install weight of it is significant. But normally when a build fails, it stops at that point and you see the error message right there in the console, don't you?
A pre-built Docker testing environment is available if you don't want to be bothered with sorting out all the details. See http://teic.github.io/TCW/testing_and_building.html
There's a Docker image for Jenkins too:
https://hub.docker.com/r/teic/jenkins/
which you could reconfigure just to build your own branch when you want it to.
But I take your point about the need for these things. I had actually answered with the Test Makefile in mind, because I've been working on that recently, but of course you mean the main Makefile. But I never actually make the stylesheets; I just use them in-place from the git checkout. As far as I know everything just works. That also has the advantage that if you want to switch to an earlier build or a different branch you can just check that out in place, use it, and then switch back to master or dev or whatever when you're done.
@bansp could you send me some of the error output so I can see what's failing? I don't have trang or xelatex installed, but I was able to do sudo make install with no problem.