Re: Trouble with texinfo-multiple-files-update

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 2 Jun 2013 12:14:19 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
> 
> Then I come to update the main menu in the top file emacs.texi.  I was
> unfortunate enough to try out C-u M-x texinfo-multiple-files-update.
> This has loaded 44 .texi files needlessly into my Emacs

This command updates the master menu by looking at all the nodes in
the manual.  Since the manual consists of 56 files, how do you want
Emacs to be able to update the master menu without visiting all those
files?  The command also updates the top-level menu in each file,
again something that is impossible without visiting them.

> marking almost all of them as "changed", though I suspect these
> "changes" are all null.

Why do you care about the fact that they are modified?  Emacs does
that elsewhere, e.g., when you "M-q" in a paragraph that is already
filled.  You don't become nervous then, do you?  So why here?

> So now I've got the hassle of getting rid of these 44 "changed" buffers,
> when all I really wanted to do was update the main menu.  It would have
> been less work just to update the main menu by hand.

I hope it's not too late to convince you not to "get rid" of these
buffers.  Instead, save them all, and then invoke "bzr diff".  I'm
sure you will see that only things that need to be changed actually
did.

> Why is there no decent command to update the main menu?

There is, it is called texinfo-multiple-files-update.  You will see in
emacs.texi that it was actually used on the manual, because there's a
comment there which tells you what NOT to do to avoid screwing it up.

> What do other people do when they want to update the main menu?

texinfo-multiple-files-update.

P.S.  We seem to have this kind of conversation every few years; e.g.,
see http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=2975.