From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs cvs newbie problems Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 23:48:50 -0400 Sender: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org Message-ID: References: Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.gmane.org X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1033704714 7631 127.0.0.1 (4 Oct 2002 04:11:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 04:11:54 +0000 (UTC) Cc: karl@freefriends.org, miles@gnu.org, teirllm@dms.auburn.edu, hattons@speakeasy.net, emacs-devel@gnu.org Return-path: Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 17xJob-0001yg-00 for ; Fri, 04 Oct 2002 06:11:49 +0200 Original-Received: from monty-python.gnu.org ([199.232.76.173]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 17xKa3-0006At-00 for ; Fri, 04 Oct 2002 07:00:51 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 17xJoa-0003wq-00; Fri, 04 Oct 2002 00:11:48 -0400 Original-Received: from list by monty-python.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.10) id 17xJSP-0003in-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 23:48:53 -0400 Original-Received: from mail by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.10) id 17xJSN-0003ic-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 23:48:52 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([199.232.76.164]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.10) id 17xJSN-0003iW-00 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 23:48:51 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.10) id 17xJSM-0005MF-00; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 23:48:50 -0400 Original-To: eliz@is.elta.co.il In-reply-to: (message from Eli Zaretskii on Thu, 3 Oct 2002 06:31:41 +0200 (IST)) Errors-To: emacs-devel-admin@gnu.org X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Emacs development discussions. List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:8339 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:8339 > This means that on a system which comes with an Info directory > in /usr/info, our packages will by default not install into that > directory. I thought that on such a system, whoever configures and installs GNU packages should invoke configure with --infodir=/usr/info. Yes, that is what they should do to get correct results. But lots of people will forget to do it. Perhaps we can design a rule for choosingthe default for infodir based on where info files already exist on the system. > I think that is somewhat of a problem. Can we find > a way to solve it? We'd need a way to find the system Info directory. The problem is actually even harder than that, since on at least some systems there are several Info directories. The existence of several Info directories is not a disaster, but it is somewhat of a problem. Avoiding that problem is the goal of this discussion. If all packages find the same right place to install their Info files, we won't get multiple Info directories. If there happen to be multiple Info directories already, it doesn't matter tremendously which on a new file is installed in, as long as it is installed in one of them and not in a new directory. If all packages avoid creating a new directory, then you will only have one. This suggests that configure should find an existing Info directory which is a good place to install, and use that as the default for infodir. If none is found, the default can be $(datadir)/info. Do you see any problem with that idea?