Devhelp information =================== The following packages are required to compile Devhelp: glib 2.10.0 (or greater) gtk+ 2.10.0 (or greater) libwnck 2.10.0 (or greater, only for X11 build) gconf 2.6.0 (or greater, only for X11 build) webkit Devhelp's primary goal is to be an API documentation browser for GNOME. When you build (or install) a GNOME library, it will build an API reference for you and install it into: $datadir/gtk-doc/html/$PACKAGE. Along with the HTML files, a .devhelp and/or .devhelp2 index file is also generated automatically. Thus Devhelp can simply scan that folder for those index files and display the books they represent. Devhelp uses the "XDG Base Directory Specification" to find documentation. You can read more about that specification here: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/ The list of locations searched for devhelp books is: $XDG_DATA_HOME/devhelp/books e.g. /home/ross/.local/share/devhelp/books/glib-2.0/glib-2.0.devhelp $XDG_DATA_HOME/gtk-doc/html e.g. /home/ross/.local/share/gtk-doc/html/glib-2.0/glib-2.0.devhelp $XDG_DATA_DIRS/devhelp/books e.g. /usr/local/share/devhelp/books/glib-2.0/glib-2.0.devhelp $XDG_DATA_DIRS/gtk-doc/html e.g. /usr/local/share/gtk-doc/html/glib-2.0/glib-2.0.devhelp Note that the two latter consist of: separated lists of directories to look for. Those environment variables are normally set up by the desktop environment or distribution. Note that the name of the directory the .devhelp file is in and the name of the .devhelp file (minus the extension) must match.