Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 11:55:42 +0300 (IDT)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Danny van Bruggen <lghq1 AT dds DOT nl>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: info dir rebuilder
In-Reply-To: <335271fc.7870843@netnews.uci.kun.nl>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970415115437.12996I-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Danny van Bruggen wrote:

> Does anybody know of a utility that will rebuild the dir-file in the
> info-directory? If it doesn't exist, I will make it. Before anyone
> says that every package comes with a readme that states what line to
> add to the dir-file and that it is therefore an unnecessary utility,
> I'm doing this because the idea of reading through the readmes and
> cutting and pasting all those lines bores me more than the idea of
> doing some programming <:)

If you just want to write a program no matter what, go ahead.
However, please note that:

	1) The README files frequently have much more useful things to say
to you than just tell how to update `info/dir'.  Frankly, at least in
packages that I upload, I'm only telling how to update `info/dir'
because people kept asking about that.  I myself fail to understand
what's so tricky about adding a line to that file that needs to be
described at all.

	2) The only thing that is NOT arbitrary on those lines is the
name of the Info file that the package installs.  Everything else can
be changed without any visible effect.  For example, here's the entry
for GCC from stock DJGPP `info/dir':

	* GCC: (gcc.inf).
		The GNU C, C++, and Objective-C Compiler

But it will still work if I change it to say this:

	* gcc: (gcc.inf).
		My dearest and beloved anti-compiler.

or even this:

	* GCC-Is-Not-GNU-C: (gcc.inf).
		Now what the heck is this?

	3) There are two ready tools to do what you want:

	   - The `makeinfo' program generates `dir' from a Texinfo
	     source which goes by the name `dir.txi'.
	   - The `install-info' program updates `dir' using a special
	     entry at the beginning of the Info file which comes with
	     a package.

	   Both these programs are part of the Texinfo package.
However, note that due to a sad omission, `install-info.exe' is not
inside v2gnu/txi390b.zip; you will have to download the sources
(txi390s.zip) and build it to get `install-info'.  Also note that some
packages lack the special entry inside their Info file, which will
prevent `install-info' from working.


Now, that's an *awful* lot of words for just adding two lines to a
text file, don't you think?