Re: *.texi files not generated

[John W. Eaton]

On 27-Nov-2009, Michael D. Godfrey wrote:

| On 11/27/09 5:29 PM, Ben Abbott wrote:
| > "make -i" doesn't generate the texi files though,
| True.  I generated them by cd doc/interpreter, then "make xxx.texi"
| would correctly generate a xxx.texi file.  I just did this in order
| to establish where to problem was.
| 
| I hope we hear from Rik fairly soon.

The problem is this change:

  http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/02d59b67632f

which split the octave_TEXINFOS variable into nodist_octave_TEXINFOS
and dist_octave_TEXINFOS.  If I understand correctly, autoconf is
supposed to recognize the dist and nodist prefixes and do some magic.
But it is not working, because no overal octave_TEXINFOS variable is
created, so in the lines

  $(srcdir)/octave.info: $(octave_TEXINFOS) $(IMAGES_TXT) $(EXAMPLE_FILES)

  octave.dvi octave.ps: $(octave_TEXINFOS) $(IMAGES_EPS) $(EXAMPLE_FILES)

  octave.pdf: $(octave_TEXINFOS) $(IMAGES_PDF) $(EXAMPLE_FILES)

  octave.html: $(octave_TEXINFOS) $(IMAGES_PNG) $(EXAMPLE_FILES)

which are intended to add extra dependencies for these targets,
$(octave_TEXINFOS) is empty, so there is no chain of dependencies that
forces the .texi files to be created.

Maybe this is not the right way to specify the extra dependencies when
using autoconf.  But if there is a proper way to do it, I don't see
how.  My guess is that I just don't understand the proper way to use
autoconf, but it may also be a bug.  Either way, I guess we probably
need the help of an autoconf guru.

jwe