Re: *.texi files not generated

[Rik]

>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Re: *.texi files not generated
> From:
> "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden>
> Date:
> Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:44:07 -0500
> To:
> "Michael D. Godfrey" <address@hidden>
>
> To:
> "Michael D. Godfrey" <address@hidden>
> CC:
> Rik <address@hidden>, octave maintainers mailing list
> <address@hidden>
>
>
> 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.
>   

My apologies.  It was the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. and I
have been away from my computer.

I'm hoping that this is merely a cruft issue.  A number of the changes I
checked in touch the autotool files directly, such as Makefile.am. 
There is a dependency mechanism that is supposed to recognize when a
configuration file has been changed and rebuild the Makefiles, but I
have found it to be weak.  The procedure I follow to verify my patches
has been to clone a new tree from savannah, run autogen.sh, run
configure, and then run make.  This avoids any cruft that may have built
up in the source tree.

Eventually, changes to the build environment will settle down and we can
stop using such extremely time-consuming build check procedures. 
However, If you have a spare 45 minutes, I would ask you to try the
procedure above.

I'm currently trying a fresh compilation with a tip downloaded today of
9ed5f64e3959.  I'll let you know.
> 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.
>   
The issue is conf.texi which is a derived file and should not be
distributed.  However, by listing it as a prerequisite for octave.info
file it looks like a source file to autotools and source files need to
be distributed.  I worked around this by using the autotool specified
magic of dist_ and no_dist_.  Perhaps there is not enough magic in these
constructs, but I'm still waiting on the results of my compilation this
morning.

--Rik