From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: simon@josefsson.org, bug-gnulib@gnu.org, bug-standards@gnu.org
Subject: Re: cmp/diff
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2020 20:05:34 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1ktKV4-0005M9-7s@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <f8543dba-0030-4a97-948a-fd435c185918@cs.ucla.edu> (message from Paul Eggert on Sat, 26 Dec 2020 16:23:56 -0800)
On 12/26/20 4:07 PM, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> install-info does not have an replacement, like say egrep/fgrep --
> this is how we install a dir entry for a info manual. Removing
> install-info would be a regression.
In practice, GNU installation procedures use install-info in the
way that's described in the proposed patch: they test whether
install-info is available, and if so they use it. The
make-stds.texi file already recomments this practice in its
"Standard Targets" section. The proposed patch is doing merely
making make-stds coherent; it's not advocating any change to
existing best practice for install-info.
The example entry in '(standards) Standard Targets' is I think
orthogonal, it is for the benefit of the user where installing the
node entry is not considered an error but only a "warning" (and then
some extra checks because we want to treat real errors as such).
Which is quite different from the behaviour we have for other programs
-- if you are missing md5sum (or even fgrep) you'd get a hard error.
So I really don't see how it makes it coherent, having install-info as
a "safe" requirement makes logical sense since our prefered
documentation format is info (the original rationale for removing
install-info was "its GNU specific"), and why we do some extra sanity
checks is to be nice to the user. The change also removes
install-info the only rule where it makes sense to use install-info --
post-installation.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-12-27 1:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-12-26 16:24 cmp/diff Simon Josefsson via Gnulib discussion list
2020-12-26 17:32 ` cmp/diff Bruno Haible
2020-12-26 18:34 ` cmp/diff Simon Josefsson via Gnulib discussion list
2020-12-26 18:49 ` cmp/diff Bruno Haible
2020-12-26 19:12 ` cmp/diff Paul Eggert
2020-12-26 21:55 ` cmp/diff Simon Josefsson via Gnulib discussion list
2020-12-26 23:12 ` cmp/diff Paul Eggert
2020-12-27 0:07 ` cmp/diff Alfred M. Szmidt
2020-12-27 0:23 ` cmp/diff Paul Eggert
2020-12-27 1:05 ` Alfred M. Szmidt [this message]
2020-12-27 0:07 ` cmp/diff Alfred M. Szmidt
2020-12-27 0:43 ` egrep, fgrep, and install-info Bruno Haible
2020-12-27 1:12 ` Alfred M. Szmidt
2020-12-26 19:31 ` cmp/diff Paul Smith
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