Transition to GNU's install-info (was: Removing cleanup-info)

[Sven Joachim <svenjoac@gmx.de>]

[CC'ing texinfo maintainer]

On 2008-05-05 14:45 +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> On Fri, 02 May 2008, Sven Joachim wrote:
>> On the other hand, it is rather late in the release cycle, and the
>> release team would probably not be too happy if we remove cleanup-info
>> now.  So the safe option would be to remove it in the master branch
>> only.  Opinions?
>
> Agreed. Guillem wanted to remove it once the install-info issue had been
> sorted. But progress has been slower than expected on this front. I'm
> never quite sure if GNU's install-info has all the features now and what
> the next step is... maybe you could lead that effort?

>From the texinfo NEWS file and the output of the respective
`install-info --help' commands, I get the impression that all options of
dpkg's install-info are supported in texinfo's install-info as of
version 4.12 (which is not packaged for Debian yet).  So, in principle
it would be possible to switch to GNU's install-info now¹ with the
following steps:

- create a separate install-info package from the texinfo source that
  Replaces: dpkg (< 1.15.0)

- remove {cleanup,install}-info files from dpkg and let dpkg 1.15.x
  pre-depend on install-info

But another question is: what exactly do we want from install-info?
Reading the threads from May 2006, there seems to be no consensus.  Some
people want a database and recreate the dir file from that, like it's
done for the Debian menu, and GNU's install-info is probably unsuitable
for that.

Another feature that would be very desirable is triggers support.  In
the long run, install-info should probably not be Priority: Required, as
it's only useful if a package providing info-browser is installed.

Regards,
        Sven


¹ where (now = after lenny) or (now = in experimental)