Unable to install md2roff-bin binary, locally or in CI/CD.

[davidnewhall]

Command attempted:

$ go get -u github.com/github/hub/md2roff-bin

What happened:

$ go get -u github.com/github/hub/md2roff-bin
# github.com/github/hub/md2roff
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:16:21: undefined: blackfriday.NoIntraEmphasis
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:17:3: undefined: blackfriday.FencedCode
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:18:3: undefined: blackfriday.SpaceHeadings
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:19:3: undefined: blackfriday.AutoHeadingIDs
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:20:3: undefined: blackfriday.DefinitionLists
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:55:57: undefined: blackfriday.Node
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:58:57: undefined: blackfriday.Node
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:61:56: undefined: blackfriday.Node
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:61:89: undefined: blackfriday.WalkStatus
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:150:24: undefined: blackfriday.Node
/go/src/github.com/github/hub/md2roff/renderer.go:150:24: too many errors

More info:

$ go version
go version go1.14.3 darwin/amd64

I used to be able to go run and go get and go install this CLI tool from my mac's terminal as well as in Jenkins CI pipelines. Lately, my builds have been failing with the error shown above. I've tried a few different things, but I'm just not sure what I'm missing. How do I build and install the md2roff-bin binary in a CI environment if this method is no longer going to work? Perhaps this is a bug? I'm really just not sure what happened. Thank you!

[mislav]

I'm not sure what happened either! But I also did not know that anyone was using these packages externally in their projects.

[davidnewhall]

I use this tool to convert markdown files to man pages. example: https://github.com/golift/application-builder/blob/master/Makefile#L71-L79

I think the changes to /v2 and go modules broke the version of blackfriday being referenced. I think you need to update your go.mod in this repo to reference a newer version of blackfriday, specifically v2+. https://github.com/github/hub/blob/master/go.mod#L13

EDIT: Just ideas ^. I also saw your comments about the future of this project in other threads, so I wonder if I should just fork that app into another repo and maintain it myself. Thoughts?

[mislav]

@davidnewhall I think your hunch is correct! I'll look into fixing the blackfriday dependency.

Would it help you if I had extracted md2roff into a separate repository and maintained it there?

[davidnewhall]

I think maintaining that binary as a separate project would be very useful. I'll be using this app for years to come.

[davidnewhall]

I forked the app here because most of my builds were failing, and I needed to move forward: https://github.com/davidnewhall/md2roff

The fix was to change the black friday import path to github.com/russross/blackfriday/v2 and update go.mod accordingly.

[davidnewhall]

Would still like to push this package back to github. Should I crack open a PR?

[mislav]

You're welcome to submit a PR to this repo 👍