Adding info documents to /usr/share/info

[Chris Jones-44]

I am trying to add info documents to my local repository.

I am downloading info documents, which I copy to /usr/share/info.

I proceed to recreate the "dir" index via:

# for f in $(ls *.gz); do install-info $f; done

While this is running, I see a few "unable to determine description for
`dir' entry - giving up" messages.

Then I launch "info" and there are new entries in the main menu, but
when I try to access them, nothing happens, just a message at the bottom
of the screen informing me that there is "no such file or directory".

One example is the "bashref" info file.

This is a debian "lenny" system, and I observe that the info files that
were installed by debian are all .gz files, while the ones that I am
downloading "manually" are .tar.gz files.

Am I supposed to gunzip, untar, and re-zip the files back again for this
to work?

Or is there a  conflict between the version of info that I am running
and the current file format at www.gnu.org ??

I have looked for documentation that explains how to install additional
info files, but have found nothing conclusive.

All apologies if I looked in the wrong places, I'm sure I'm not doing it
right and that there is an obvious solution to this, but even after
searching the mailing list archives, and hours of guessing I have not
been able to find anything.

Hopefully, someone will give me a push in the right direction.

Thanks,

CJ

[Tomas Zerolo]

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On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 11:11:24PM -0400, Chris Jones wrote:
> I am trying to add info documents to my local repository.
>
> I am downloading info documents, which I copy to /usr/share/info.
>
> I proceed to recreate the "dir" index via:
>
> # for f in $(ls *.gz); do install-info $f; done

Hm. There seem to be more than one install-info (specifically: Debian's,
Gnu's [1], [2]). Debian itself seems to be working on the move from
Debian's version to Gnu's.

> While this is running, I see a few "unable to determine description for
> `dir' entry - giving up" messages.

Seems to be Debian's version guessing from the limited knowledge I
have).

[...]

Cf. the references. Debian's install-info (the one you most probably are
running) seems to rely on some heading format (and seems uncapable of
installing correctly multi-section documents).

On your system, Gnu's version is most probably called "ginstall-info".

[...]

> All apologies if I looked in the wrong places [...]

No need to apologize. "Constantly looking in the wrong places" would be
a good job description for what most of us do, right? ;-)

[1] <http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s12.2>
[2] <http://wiki.debian.org/Transitions/DpkgToGnuInstallInfo>

Hope those are useful pointers

Regards
- -- tomás
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[Chris Jones-44]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 09:22:04AM EDT, tomas@... wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 11:11:24PM -0400, Chris Jones wrote:

> > I am trying to add info documents to my local repository.
> >
> > I am downloading info documents, which I copy to /usr/share/info.
> >
> > I proceed to recreate the "dir" index via:
> >
> > # for f in $(ls *.gz); do install-info $f; done
>
> Hm. There seem to be more than one install-info (specifically: Debian's,
> Gnu's [1], [2]). Debian itself seems to be working on the move from
> Debian's version to Gnu's.

> > While this is running, I see a few "unable to determine description
> > for `dir' entry - giving up" messages.
>
> Seems to be Debian's version guessing from the limited knowledge I
> have).

Yes.

$ dpkg -S /usr/sbin/install-info
dpkg

> [...]
>
> Cf. the references. Debian's install-info (the one you most probably are
> running) seems to rely on some heading format (and seems uncapable of
> installing correctly multi-section documents).

Yes.

It looks like the issue is not direcly the "tar" in .tar.gz.. but rather
the fact that the "tar" implies a multifile document.

> On your system, Gnu's version is most probably called "ginstall-info".

Yes, and it's part of the "texinfo" package.

$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/ginstall-info
texinfo

> [...]
>
> > All apologies if I looked in the wrong places [...]
>
> No need to apologize. "Constantly looking in the wrong places" would be
> a good job description for what most of us do, right? ;-)

This would make a nice e-mail sig :-)

> [1] <http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s12.2>
> [2] <http://wiki.debian.org/Transitions/DpkgToGnuInstallInfo>
>
> Hope those are useful pointers

I've spent the last couple of hours unsuccessfully trying to hunt down
the update-info-dir script that recreates the "dir" file from scratch.

Looks like my best bet at this point is to install texinfo from the
tarball - presumably in /usr/local and use that in the future, making
sure I backup the /usr/local/share/info directory before adding any
texinfo manual.

Comes as a bit of a suprise that such an venerable documentation system
as texinfo should be so "unstable" in debian "stable".

In any case thanks much for prompt response, and do let me know if you
can think of a more productive way of working around this issue.

CJ

[Karl Berry]

    I've spent the last couple of hours unsuccessfully trying to hunt down
    the update-info-dir script that recreates the "dir" file from scratch.

I don't know about update-info-dir, but there is fix-info-dir and
gen-dir-node in the util/ subdir of the sources, and you can get them
from browsing the CVS repository at
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/texinfo/ if you don't have the sources
already.  I've never run them myself and can't say for sure that they
are what you want.

[Karl Berry]

    I've spent the last couple of hours unsuccessfully trying to hunt down
    the update-info-dir script that recreates the "dir" file from scratch.

I don't know about update-info-dir, but there is fix-info-dir and
gen-dir-node in the util/ subdir of the sources, and you can get them
from browsing the CVS repository at
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/texinfo/ if you don't have the sources
already.  I've never run them myself and can't say for sure that they
are what you want.

[Karl Berry]

    downloading "manually" are .tar.gz files.

I don't recall anything in the info readers that supports info files
bundled in a .tar.gz (or anything else), unless it's a recent invention
in Emacs info.  So I think you should unpack the tars.

Once unbundled, the .info files should be found whether they are
compressed or not.

If this doesn't help, please show us one of the dir lines that is
failing, and list the corresponding .info file(s) you have.  I am not
sure from your descriptions exactly what you are doing.

    I have looked for documentation that explains how to install additional
    info files, but have found nothing conclusive.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/texinfo/Installing-an-Info-File.html

This talks about GNU install-info, not Debian i-i.  (Perhaps one
day there will only be one i-i program.)

Best,
Karl

[Chris Jones-44]

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 07:49:16PM EDT, Karl Berry wrote:
>     downloading "manually" are .tar.gz files.
>
> I don't recall anything in the info readers that supports info files
> bundled in a .tar.gz (or anything else), unless it's a recent invention
> in Emacs info.  So I think you should unpack the tars.

Yes, simple as that. I didn't bother zipping back the individual files.

> Once unbundled, the .info files should be found whether they are
> compressed or not.

I was using an info derivate called "pinfo" and that added to the
confusion, because it does not know how to handle soft links.

Which means that the gcc and cpp manuals, which in my setup at least,
are reached via a soft link were greyed out in the index menu.

Works fine with native info.

> If this doesn't help, please show us one of the dir lines that is
> failing, and list the corresponding .info file(s) you have.  I am not
> sure from your descriptions exactly what you are doing.
>
>     I have looked for documentation that explains how to install additional
>     info files, but have found nothing conclusive.
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/texinfo/Installing-an-Info-File.html

Well this did help, but in different way:

The info manuals for "bc" and "accounting" do not have "INFO-DIR"
sections, so I had to add them manually.

http://www.gnu.org/software/bc/manual/info/bc-info.tar.gz
http://www.gnu.org/software/acct/manual/info/accounting.info.tar.gz

One of them, bc (?), does not even have the GNU manifesto/license
either.

CJ

[Karl Berry]

Hi Chris,

    The info manuals for "bc" and "accounting" do not have "INFO-DIR"
    sections, so I had to add them manually.

I'm not surprised.  There are plenty more discrepancies among GNU
manuals, too.

If you're up for it, please report that to the respective package maintainers.

Best,
Karl