Re: Emacs can't be built without recent makeinfo

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Ulrich Mueller wrote:

>>> Do we really want to stop the build process completely just
>>> because the online manuals can't be properly built?

The "online manuals" are a vital part of Emacs, so yes...

>> Indeed, no. Especially since they are supposed to be pre-built in
>> the tarball.

...however in many cases they are pre-built.

>>  The test should/could be moved to the Makefile, maybe?
>
> Is this really an issue? texinfo 4.6 was released in 2003.

I agree with you. Perhaps the issue is the need to have _any_ version
of texinfo though.

The info files are already only deleted by `make maintainer-clean',
which "may require special tools to rebuild", so that's fine.
We don't check for autoconf etc either.

One problem I see is that the info files aren't in the CVS, so a fresh
checkout could fail to build. And also any update to the .texi files
will trigger a rebuild. So basically there are only problems with CVS
builds.

Perhaps a check early on in the Makefile will suffice, but it seems
a bit flaky?