This file only applies if you got a version of RAB via CVS. The CVS tree may be used just like an ordinary source tarball, with two small exceptions. The RAB distribution tarball contains a subdirectory 'doc' holding an already formatted version of the RAB manual. This directory is generated from a source file 'manual.sgml', hence it does not make sense to include the contents of 'doc' in the CVS tree.
When building RAB without a 'doc' directory, make tries to rebuild the 'doc' subdirectory. This in turn needs two commands 'db2html' and 'db2ps' to comvert docbook to html or postscript, respectively. If you don't have these scripts, you may download the file doc-0.X.tar.gz from http://sourceforge.net/projects/rab. Here, X should be the most recent version available. The CVS tree might be slightly ahead of the manual in doc-0.X.tar.gz, but the current doc version is still working. A short description of features new since the last release is contained in the 'NEWS' file.
However, after getting doc-0.X.tar.gz, change to the toplevel RAB source directory and unpack doc-0.X.tar.gz there. This will install the 'doc' directory.
If 'manual.sgml' changes in the CVS source tree, the toplevel makefile does not automatically rebuilds 'doc'. You have to enter the command
make docs
manually.
There is a second annoying detail. RAB now uses a configure script, even if this script is pretty much fake at this point. The CVS tree contains the files 'configure.ac' and 'acinclude.m4' only, these are the source files the real configure script is build from. To create a configure script, run the commands
aclocal
autoconf
The RAB distribution includes a graphical build script. This is not really required for anything, but is just supposed to be a nice gadget. To create the necessary files from the CVS tree, you will need to run the following commands.
cd config
make buildshell
When done, the toplevel source directory will contain an executable file 'build' that may be run with './build' or './build -v', respectively.
Anything that changed since the last release of RAB will be documented in the 'NEWS' file contained in RAB's toplevel source directory. The CVS version of 'manual.sgml' may not yet document some things already described in NEWS. Conversely, it's also possible that 'manual.sgml' contains stuff not yet implemented.