Beware with /usr/share/info/dir.gz bugs

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

Hello.

This is to warn interested parties that now that install-info is
GNU install-info, the probability of a package shipping a file named
/usr/share/info/dir.gz by mistake is now much higher than before.

Some packages using automake have a Makefile.in like this:

install-info-am:
[...]
        @if (install-info --version && \
             install-info --version 2>&1 | sed 1q | grep -i -v debian) >/dev/null 2>&1; then \
[... code which uses install-info ... ]

As "install-info --version" does not contain the string "debian"
anymore, the test is true and the install-info part is actually
executed. As a result, some packages ship /usr/share/info/dir.gz
if the new install-info is present during the build.

I'm going to fix my packages by patching Makefile.in so that it reads
"@if false; then \", which is simple and effective, and avoids a
"Build-Conflicts: install-info", but I believe this is actually a
problem in automake, see Bug#543992 for details.

Thanks.