Bug#889631: mpfr 4.0 branch fails to build with texinfo.tex from automake
On 2018-02-05 10:49:18 +0100, Matthias Klose wrote:
> I see that the texinfo.tex version in automake is from 2013, and is
> definitely too old for the mpfr4 build. Could that copy be kept in
> sync with texinfo?
I reported in November 2017:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=882844
automake: "automake --add-missing" should not install an obsolete
texinfo.tex file
(following a comment concerning the bug below).
> I assume texinfo's version of texinfo.tex is too old as well for the
> mpfr4 build,
Probably, but maybe for a different reason. The current version
from the texinfo package does not support @var in exponent or
subscript as it yields a "\scriptfont 5 is undefined" error:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=882842
and
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2017-11/msg00019.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2017-12/msg00000.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2018-01/msg00009.html
> so maybe Vincent could provide a patch to update texinfo's version?
I'm not sure what is best. I wonder whether the same thing as
config.guess / config.sub should be done, for which automake just
provides symlinks to the up-to-date files from autotools-dev.
I'd say that /usr/share/automake-1.15/texinfo.tex should be a
symlink too.
For /usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/texinfo.tex, I don't know, since
there are also txi-??.tex files in "/usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo",
which might be used for some projects that would provide non-English
documentation.
Either the texinfo.tex file should be provided by the texinfo package
(possibly patched, which would be the case now, but otherwise it seems
that in general, this file is up-to-date as upstream texinfo has quite
regular updates), in which case automake should depend on texinfo for
the symlink target, or it should be a separate package with the
/usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo files, similar to autotools-dev.
--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
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