Re: Who owns dir and {standards,configure}.info?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> skribis:

>> From: address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès)
>> Cc: address@hidden
>> Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 12:05:33 +0100
>> 
>> > 'dir' should not be installed, it should be updated by running
>> > install-info.  I suggest to file bug reports against packages that
>> > overwrite (as opposed to update) 'dir' with their versions.
>> 
>> Actually they don’t overwrite it.  GDB/Binutils has:
>> 
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> install-info: do-install-info dir.info
>>      s=`cd $(srcdir); ${PWD_COMMAND}`; export s; \
>>      if [ -f dir.info ] ; then \
>>        $(INSTALL_DATA) dir.info $(DESTDIR)$(infodir)/dir.info ; \
>>      else true ; fi
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>> 
>> Emacs seems to do something similar.
>> 
>> However, when installing into separate prefixes, they install their own
>> ‘dir’, which is annoying in a one-prefix-per-package setup like Guix.
>
> Sorry, I don't understand what prefix has to do with this: you can set
> up INFOPATH to mention several directories, and all Info readers will
> look in all those directories for the 'dir' file, and create a single
> 'dir' node by concatenating all of them.

Oh, I didn’t know ‘dir’ files would be automatically concatenated.

> So if a package installs 'dir' in a separate directory, that is OK, I
> think.

Indeed.

The only issue is that when installing packages with Guix (or Stow I
suppose), the union of all these prefixes is computed, leading to a
symlink tree that has only one ‘dir’.  But Guix doesn’t have specific
knowledge about ‘dir’ file handling; it just picks up one of the
colliding ‘dir’ files and emits a warning.

Obviously it could be taught to ignore ‘dir’ files altogether, or these
packages could be changed to not install it.

What would be most in line with the spirit of Info and standard
GNU practice?

Ludo’.