Windows make file for Sphinx documentation

[debjan]

As discussed in this issue I'm hopefully doing valid pull request to IPython, asking for permission to add make.cmd to IPython repository.

This small batch script would allow using basic make <target> command syntax for building Sphinx documentation on Windows.

[Carreau]

Well, I don't think any of the core devs use windows, my take on that would be to merge as is.
I would gladly tag as SciPy-2012-Sprint to get feedback as some people might have windows there, so we can have people trying to build on different version, but github does not allow tag on PR...

[debjan]

Hm, it's really just a simple batch file executing same command with additional arguments. And it's not that important to be thorough tested. Windows user can of course instead, look in a bash make script and deduce source/destination than launch desired command and arguments, but it's more convenient to just go with make latex i.e.. I guess that's the purpose of provided make file

Before replying I searched for other possible projects that use Sphinx, and on first results - scikit-learn, scikits-image, they all have batch version for the Sphinx make file, too. It seems similar to above only that they are straight forward without structure. FWW from the looks it also seems like you guys can just grab make.bat from scikits-image and it will work for IPython too; scikit-learn uses different source/destination folders, but it's like same batch file as in scikits-image. Also Pandas has make.py which is yet another approach.

As a side note, I'm not a promoter of any OS, nor want to discredit, I've used various variants of Linux and Windows (including latest preview release) and currently I use both Linux (Ubuntu makes my life easy) and Windows (XP makes it even more easier) and I can't see reasonable reason to change any of it. But what fascinates me, is that above average PC users like you, can't read simple batch file for the OS that is most widely used across the world. I mean, wanting or not, circumstances can lead to face a PC with Windows installed on it. I don't understand the aversion, it doesn't seem realistic to me.

[debjan]

ha, ha,... various variants and reasonable reason...
Funny. What else had I wrote too? Nevermind...

[minrk]

As @Carreau said, we often don't have Windows to test. This is not an argument against such things, only that Windows fixes are more likely to be merged without testing. Since this is an attempt at an entirely new feature and Windows-only, I am fine merging as-is, since I presume it works for at least one person, or you wouldn't have submitted it. Thanks!