Re: Using GNU's install-info in Debian instead of dpkg's install-info

[Ian Jackson <ian@davenant.greenend.org.uk>]

Ian Zimmerman writes ("Re: Using GNU's install-info in Debian instead of dpkg's install-info"):
> It's wrong on two counts:
> 1/ The visual format of the dir file is used for collecting the sections.
> This has all the robustness of, say, grepping for text in a Postscript file.
> 
> 2/ Since no record is kept of the individual additions by packages,

Just for the record as the original designer and implementer of the
dpkg install-info I agree completely with what Ian Zimmerman says
there.  If I had to do it again I would do it very differently.

> The other way is to keep some kind of simple database on the side which
> install-info first updates, then uses to generate the dirfile.

The right answer is to do it the way the menu system does it: packages
install the info metadata as part of their static contents, in
/usr/share somewhere, and then their postinsts run a script to
regenerate /info/dir from the contents.  When dpkg has hooks (aka
triggers) then this can be used instead of the postinst rune.

Transition from here to there is left as an exercise to the reader
(although some careful thought is necessary as history suggests that
this kind of thing is often screwed up ...)

Ian.