Installing info manuals without cluttering my profile.

Installing info manuals without cluttering my profile.

[Arnaud Daby-Seesaram]

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Hi,

I am trying to install more manuals (info pages), without installing
associated packages in my profile.

My first idea was to use a home service to overwrite INFOPATH.  However,
I do not think that it is sufficient.  For example, the following
commands show unexpected `(top)' nodes.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
INFOPATH=$(guix build emacs)/share/info info # Empty (top).

info -d "$(guix build haunt)/share/info"     # No haunt in (top).
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---


An alternative (that I prefer to avoid) would be to write packages that
would copy the info manuals of the packages I need.


Motivation:

I currently use direnv+manifests to setup work environments in different
directories.  However, the info-mode of Emacs is easily lost (the `top'
node is generated with the first INFOPATH the info-mode sees).

This can be annoying when switching profiles, so I would like to add all
info pages that are relevant for me by altering INFOPATH
home-profile-wide.


Best regards,

-- 
Arnaud

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Re: Installing info manuals without cluttering my profile.

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

Hi Arnaud,

I have a very superficial understanding of Texinfo, but I thought it relied on 'directory' files and not just collections of raw .info files.  In Guix, these are generated by a profile hook.

From <https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Other-Info-Directories.html>:

> The standalone Info reader merges any files named dir in any directory listed in the INFOPATH variable into a single menu presented to you in the node called ‘(dir)Top’.

All I know is that there is no 'dir' file in $(guix build emacs)/share/info.  I think that a package shipping one directly would be wrong.

Were I in your position, I would not manually mess around with environment variables (which is also 'clobbering' your main environment!), but instead maintain a separate Guix profile for my info manuals.


Kind regards,

T G-R

Sent on the go.  Excuse or enjoy my brevity.

Re: Installing info manuals without cluttering my profile.

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

s/clobbering/cluttering/, I didn't mean to misquote you.

Kind regards,

T G-R

Sent on the go.  Excuse or enjoy my brevity.

Re: Installing info manuals without cluttering my profile.

[Arnaud Daby-Seesaram]

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Hi Tobias,

> I have a very superficial understanding of Texinfo, but I thought it relied on 'directory' files and not just collections of raw .info files.  In Guix, these are generated by a profile hook.
>
> From <https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Other-Info-Directories.html>:
>
>> The standalone Info reader merges any files named dir in any directory listed in the INFOPATH variable into a single menu presented to you in the node called ‘(dir)Top’.

Thank you; this is what I was missing.

> All I know is that there is no 'dir' file in $(guix build emacs)/share/info.  I think that a package shipping one directly would be wrong.
>
> Were I in your position, I would not manually mess around with environment variables (which is also 'clobbering' your main environment!), but instead maintain a separate Guix profile for my info manuals.

Reading parts of `guix/profiles.scm', it seems that 'dir' files are
built using install-info in `(guix profiles)', e.g. to build
`.guix-home/profile/share/info/dir' (I use `guix home').

As a temporary solution, I have made a 'dir' file for my use case, and
made sure that Emacs would find referenced manuals.

I will later make a separate profile for this, thank you for the
suggestion.


Best regards,

-- 
Arnaud

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