install-info: multiple INFO-DIR-SECTIONs

["Micah J. Cowan" <micah@cowan.name>]

(originally sent to team@dpkg.org; I gather that didn't go through).

I notice that Mike Stone's bug regarding GNU's "new" multiple
dir-section format (#180127) has gone untouched for a very long time.

In the meantime GNU has packages (at least coreutils, which spurred this
bug in the first place) that use this format, and don't get properly
installed into the info "dir", requiring the user to type "info
coreutils ls", instead of the intended (and documented, via manpages)
"info ls".

I'd be interested in implementing a fix for this (note: I'm an Ubuntu
user), but it would be a fairly major change (relative to the size of
the script), and I don't want to do it in isolation only to have to redo
a lot of the work.

So I have some questions...

  - Should I work relative to the current unstable source packages, or
    is there a repository with more recent code?

  - Is there any existing test suite for install-make? That could help
    a lot: I'm liable to break something with an invasive change such as
    this.

  - What other incompatibilities might exist between ginstall-make and
    install-make that I might need to be aware of?

  - Since GNU's install-make is fairly ubiquitous in the Free Software
    world, and the features between the two versions are very similar,
    why hasn't the original Debian version been replaced with the GNU
    version... is it that there are also features/subtle functionality
    differences in Debian's version that are needed?

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/