New builder

[cchalmers]

Don't merge yet. See diagrams/diagrams-pandoc/pull/1.

[bergey]

What Maybe String?

[bergey]

It seems to me that BackendBuild has a lot of overlap with Mainable and DiagramOpts. I understand that this is partly because there's already overlap - DiagramOpts doesn't use SizeSpec, and the relationship to Options b v n isn't very clear.

Can we make this simpler? Maybe we do need two parallel sets of option types, and rendering functions, but I'd like to think otherwise.

[cchalmers]

Part of the problem is some backends (canvas for example) don't have a "save to file" function. And maybe it won't make sense for some backends to have 'SizeSpec V2` option. I agree it's kinda cumbersome to have a class just for this.

[jeffreyrosenbluth]

This is currently a limitation of blank-canvas. There are plans to rectify it, but it probably won't happen in the immediate future.

[byorgey]

We ought to add some version bounds on these.

[cchalmers]

I added a findSandbox function to Diagrams.Util which should be smart enough to find most sandbox (including remote sandboxes, sandboxes in parent folders or sandboxes from DIAGRAMS_SANDBOX variable). Other tools like builder and the linking finding in doc also use it. If anyone gets a chance to try it out let me know if it doesn't work for you.

I also made some changes to the CmdLine loop for a cleaner output.

I'm still unsure the about BackendBuild class.

[bergey]

@cchalmers Are you hoping to merge this before the 1.3 release, or immediately after?

I'm leaning towards after, but I'm willing to be persuaded. As fiddly as the -doc build system is, I think I'd rather slog through one more release with a tested system, than change it with 3 weeks before we release.

[cchalmers]

I'm not sure. It shouldn't be too much work to get the site working using this. The htmls and pdfs generate the diagrams fine, it just needs integrating with the shake file and the website's style.

That said, I'm not happy with the details of BackendBuild and the whole thing feels unpolished.

Maybe it's best just to fix the current rst tutorials and work on this after.

I could split out the sandbox finder (0756912) and the prettier CmdLine loop (4857193) and merge that before 1.3.

[bergey]

Splitting out those two changes sounds great.

I'd like to think more about Mainable / DiagramOpts / BackendBuild. Since you're also ambivalent about BackendBuild, doing it after the release seems better.

[bergey]

I think all of this has been merged except for the BackendBuild class. Per diagrams/diagrams-builder#16 we think we have a better way forward, so I'm closing this. I'll leave the branch around in case I'm wrong about getting diagrams-pandoc to pick builders from PATH.