Issue with makeinfo dependency

Issue with makeinfo dependency

[Ergus]

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Hi:

I am building emacs in a new system and I have seen that by default there is a dependency with makeinfo. The latest releases of most popular distributions like Arch, Debian or Ubuntu doesn't provide such program anymore cause they provide texi2html as a modern replacement.

The real issue is that emacs' configure doesn't detect this and I only get an error at the end of the build. 

make[2]: Entering directory '/mnt/almacen/repo/gits/emacs/build_debian/doc/misc'  GEN      ../../../doc/misc/../../info/efaq.info/bin/bash: makeinfo: command not found
Should we modify this Makefile.in to use texi2html conditionally when makeinfo isn't detected? Or are there a any known compatibility problem with the "new" texi2* family??

BestErgus

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Re: Issue with makeinfo dependency

[Noam Postavsky]

On Mon, 18 May 2020 at 07:13, Ergus <spacibba@aol.com> wrote:

> I am building emacs in a new system and I have seen that by default there is a dependency with makeinfo. The latest releases of most popular distributions like Arch, Debian or Ubuntu doesn't provide such program anymore cause they provide texi2html as a modern replacement.

Debian provides makeinfo in the package called texinfo:
https://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=contents&keywords=makeinfo&suite=testing

Arch has texinfo as well:
https://www.archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/texinfo/

> The real issue is that emacs' configure doesn't detect this and I only get an error at the end of the build.
>
> make[2]: Entering directory '/mnt/almacen/repo/gits/emacs/build_debian/doc/misc'
>   GEN      ../../../doc/misc/../../info/efaq.info
> /bin/bash: makeinfo: command not found

configure.ac does have a check for it, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't
be working for you:

## Require makeinfo >= 4.13 (last of the 4.x series) to build the manuals.
if test "${MAKEINFO:=makeinfo}" != "no"; then
  case `($MAKEINFO --version) 2>/dev/null` in
    *' (GNU texinfo) '4.1[[3-9]]* | \
    *' (GNU texinfo) '[[5-9]]* | \
    *' (GNU texinfo) '[[1-9][0-9]]* ) ;;
    *) MAKEINFO=no;;
  esac
fi

Re: Issue with makeinfo dependency

[Paul Eggert]

> On Mon, 18 May 2020 at 07:13, Ergus <spacibba@aol.com> wrote:
> 
>> I am building emacs in a new system and I have seen that by default there is a dependency with makeinfo. The latest releases of most popular distributions like Arch, Debian or Ubuntu doesn't provide such program anymore cause they provide texi2html as a modern replacement.

As a side note, texi2html isn't a "modern replacement" for makeinfo. 
It's more the other way around, as texi2html got merged into makeinfo. See:

https://www.nongnu.org/texi2html/