info/ directory in CVS

info/ directory in CVS

[Glenn Morris]

Does the info/ directory need to be stored in CVS at all? It contains
just two files under version control:

dir - which I would have thought would be an automatically generated file;

COPYING - which does not get installed anywhere, and AFAIK there does
not have to be a COPYING in every directory.

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:21:50 -0400
> 
> 
> Does the info/ directory need to be stored in CVS at all? It contains
> just two files under version control:
> 
> dir - which I would have thought would be an automatically generated file;
> 
> COPYING - which does not get installed anywhere, and AFAIK there does
> not have to be a COPYING in every directory.

If we generate dir (with install-info), the order of menu items there
will be alphabetical, not the order we want.

What are the problems with having the info subdirectory in CVS?

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> If we generate dir (with install-info), the order of menu items there
> will be alphabetical, not the order we want.

I see. Thanks for the explanation.

> What are the problems with having the info subdirectory in CVS?

No problems worth mentioning, given that there is a good reason to
have it there.

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Does the info/ directory need to be stored in CVS at all? It contains
>> just two files under version control:
>> 
>> dir - which I would have thought would be an automatically generated file;
>> 
>> COPYING - which does not get installed anywhere, and AFAIK there does
>> not have to be a COPYING in every directory.

> If we generate dir (with install-info), the order of menu items there
> will be alphabetical, not the order we want.

I hope someday we can fix this limitation so that `dir' can really be
auto-generated.


        Stefan

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Richard Stallman]

    I hope someday we can fix this limitation so that `dir' can really be
    auto-generated.

That requires some other way to specify the right order of manuals.
What could it be?

We could let each manual specify a priority.  I hope that each program
won't specify the highest possible.

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:27:42 -0400
> 
> > If we generate dir (with install-info), the order of menu items there
> > will be alphabetical, not the order we want.
> 
> I hope someday we can fix this limitation so that `dir' can really be
> auto-generated.

You mean, change install-info? or add some feature to Emacs to do that
instead of install-info?

For the former, you are welcome to suggest a different design to Karl
(cc'ed).

In any case, I'm curious to know how could we order the entries in a
repeatable way that uses an order other than alphabetic, especially
when it adds new entries.

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> CC: eliz@gnu.org, rgm@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:38:27 -0400
> 
>     I hope someday we can fix this limitation so that `dir' can really be
>     auto-generated.
> 
> That requires some other way to specify the right order of manuals.
> What could it be?
> 
> We could let each manual specify a priority.  I hope that each program
> won't specify the highest possible.

install-info could preserve the order of existing entries.  The
problem is with new entries: for them, there's no easy alternative I
can think of that would produce a consistent ordering.

Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Miles Bader]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> In any case, I'm curious to know how could we order the entries in a
> repeatable way that uses an order other than alphabetic, especially
> when it adds new entries.

AFAIK, alphabetic would be fine, except for a few special cases
(e.g. "Emacs" section goes first; "Emacs" is first in Emacs section,
etc.)

So as long as we can describe the special cases, there's no problem.

For special cases, some sort of arbitrary priority based system would
probably be good enough, e.g., sort by priority, default priority is
100, everything with equal priority is alphabetic.

-Miles

-- 
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Re: info/ directory in CVS

[Richard Stallman]

    So as long as we can describe the special cases, there's no problem.

It seems to me that a presupplied `dir' file is the easiest
way to describe the special cases.