Texinfo vs. Debian install-info, new upstream texinfo

Hi all!

Thanks to Karl a new upstream of texinfo has been released, including
many of the suggestions the dpkg team provided.

Before shipping a package of texinfo 4.9 to unstable I want to continue
with the install-info merge. From our transition-plan:

--------------
Transition proposal
===================
+ Changes in dpkg
- replace dpkg's install-info by a script which just issues a
warning,
or exit silently.
This script could be removed for Lenny+1 or 2.
install-info should no more be essential, it is only needed when the
info viewer is installed to search the info pages.

+ Changes in texinfo
- a new install-info package replaces dpkg's install-info
- This install-info should support the current dpkg's install-info
options (i.e. no failures, but not necessarily registering the info
file)
IMO, this install-info should be compatible with the GNU's install
info, and when it detects that it is used by a old Debian package, it
should do nothing (or just warn and recommend using update-info-dir,
see below).
* this should provide a compatibility with packages not installed
from a Debian package (make && make install)
* and should not block the installation of old packages
* full compatibility with current dpkg's install-info would be
* nice,
but is not required
- Add an update-info-dir script. This script should just delete the
dir
file and then call the GNU's install-info with all the info files.
(see also the previous mails from Ian Zimmerman, and his patch for
--generate in install-info)

- When installed for the first time (or first time >= version xxx),
it should call update-info-dir.
* There may be an issue with local softwares (not Debian packages)
=> maybe add a debconf question / NEWS entry?
* What options should be used when installing the old info files?
- Add support for multiple dir files in the info viewer.
This would permit update-info-dir to use the
--dir-file /usr/share/info/debian-dir option.
/usr/share/info/dir (and /usr/local/share/info/dir) could be used for
non Debian's info files.
- Fix some regressions from dpkg's install-info.
(IIRC an alignment regression was mentioned with GNU's texinfo)
-----------------------

So my plan is the following: I create a 4.9/experimental package
with:
- a new install-info package (should probably be essential, no?) containing
a script as above.
Don't we have one of these scripts already present? AFAIR someone
sent a script doing this under the assumption that 2 options were
implemented in upstream install-info, which has been done.

- Concerning the update-info-dir script I am a but lost, do we have
a script for this already?

then we can slowly continue adding stuff/features there.

Any comments?

Best wishes

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <preining.TakeThisOut@logic.at> Vienna University of Technology
Debian Developer <preining.TakeThisOut@debian.org> Debian TeX Group
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Thanks for writing, Norbert. I was just about to do the same.

- Concerning the update-info-dir script I am a but lost, do we have
a script for this already?

There are two different scripts in the Texinfo distribution to do this
job: gen-dir-node and fix-info-dir (in the util subdirectory). I don't
know which is better or what the differences are.

It seems desirable to me to have the logic for rebuilding the dir file
be in a separate script, not embedded in install-info. Not something to
program in C, seems to me.

- Add support for multiple dir files in the info viewer.

Both Emacs Info and standalone info already merge every dir file they
find, as far as I know. Are you talking about something else?


I plan to make a pretest for the next "real" release of texinfo soon.
It would be great to finally make progress on the install-info issue.

Thanks,
Karl


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