Subject: Re: bug#7657: TEXINFOS and MANS primaries accepts too many prefixes

From: Stefano Lattarini <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:17:09 +0100

On Tuesday 21 December 2010, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * Stefano Lattarini wrote on Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 01:55:39PM CET:
> > Am I missing something here?  Because currently all of:
> > 
> >   pkglib_MANS = foo.1
> [...]
> >   inst_nobase_mylib_MANS = foo.1
> > 
> > do *not* cause foo.1 to be installed (might this be another automake
> > bug? I need to investigate).
> > 
> > And similarly, for texinfo, all of:
> > 
> >   pkglib_TEXINFOS = foo.texi
> [...]
> >   inst_nobase_mylib_TEXINFOS = foo.texi
> > 
> > do *not* cause foo.into to be even *built* with "make info"!  It gets
> > build only if one uses "info_TEXINFOS = foo.texi".
> 
> Ah.  I was missing something.  This changes the question quite a bit.
> If we don't take action upon all the other combinations, then it makes
> more sense to warn about them.  Thanks for the research!
>
Well, I should have done more research up front.  It's obvious that the
above does not work as I expected, because, reading from the automake
manual (not a literal excerpt):

  Sometimes an info file actually depends on more than one .texi file.
  For instance, in GNU Hello, hello.texi includes the file gpl.texi.
  You can tell Automake about these dependencies using a foo_TEXINFOS
  variable.  Here is how GNU Hello does it:
    info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi
    hello_TEXINFOS = gpl.texi

So there's no "real" bug here, just a badly chosen naming convention.
Maybe Automake might be modified to instead use something like:
    info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi
    hello_TEXINFOSOURCES = hello.texi gpl.texi
and/or:
    info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi
    EXTRA_hello_TEXINFOSOURCES = gpl.texi
and start to warn above the old TEXINFOS usage.  Then, starting from
Automake 1.13, the obsoleted "foo_TEXINFOS = bar.texi" idiom could
be removed.

An obvious advantage of this new convention would be its similarity
to the conventions already in place for the PROGRAMS and LIBRARIES
primaries.

Poll for automake users: would you find this new convention worthwhile,
or is the current behaviour Good Enough?

> > BTW, I'm going to merge this bug with bug#7656 (and then retitle both
> > of them), otherwise we will be forced to incur in a lot of useless
> > duplication among the two discussions.  Sorry for not havig reported
> > these two related issues with a single report right away.
> 
And now I'm going to (try to) separate the two bugs again, because, as
it just turned out, they really are about two completely unrelated
issues.  D'oh.

Regards,
   Stefano