[GRASS5] man error kills 5.3 compile using alt build sys on OS X

[Scott W Mitchell]

I'm dabbling at creating an automatic build of binaries on an OS X machine
from the 5.3cvs code, so I asked Markus for the script he uses for this on
Linux.

I've run into trouble with it bailing out early in the make, when
it's processing manual pages.  I've never run into this before, but this
is also the first time I've used the alternate build system, so it all
looks different to me, adding confusion.  As a result, I'm a little
baffled on how to start troubleshooting - any pointers/suggestions
would be most welcome.

It's starting to look like a bug or at least a peculiarity of Mac OS X,
since it seems to have got past the manual page part of the build fine on
my Linux system (still working through the rest of the build).

When I first run the build script, it configures find, then it does all of
the copying and converting steps of html->man pages, but then I get:

Converting: /Volumes/stipaUnix/cvsgrass/freshgrass/html/html/xganim.html
to
/Users/smitch/macgrass-build/dist.powerpc-apple-darwin7.3.0/man/man1/xganim.1
mkdir -p
/Users/smitch/macgrass-build/dist.powerpc-apple-darwin7.3.0/man/cat1
man
/Users/smitch/macgrass-build/dist.powerpc-apple-darwin7.3.0/man/man1/ascii_formats.1
>
/Users/smitch/macgrass-build/dist.powerpc-apple-darwin7.3.0/man/cat1/ascii_formats.1
No manual entry for
/Users/smitch/macgrass-build/dist.powerpc-apple-darwin7.3.0/man/man1/ascii_formats.1
make[1]: ***
[/Users/smitch/macgrass-build/dist.powerpc-apple-darwin7.3.0/man/cat1/ascii_formats.1]
Error 1
make: *** [docs] Error 2
ERROR: compilation error.

Does this rely on behaviour of GNU man ?  Apple uses BSD man.

Unfortunately, this creates a zero byte file in the cat section, which
means subsequent makes just go on to the next file, creating more and more
zero byte preformatted output files.

Now I'm stuck - I thought I could compare to the traditional build system
to figure out the difference, but my ignorance of how the build system and
make work has brought me to a dead end.

Ideas/comments?

Thanks,
Scott