Hi everyone, (Automake folks: Werner sent the following to bug-texinfo.)
I've just tried to compile texinfo from the CVS; everything worked fine until info.1 was generated -- no help2man was installed on my system. After fixing this, building succeeded. However, I've observed one minor issue: After the `make' error, a file `info.1' has been created with the contents .ab help2man is required to generate this page Running `make' again after installation of help2man retained this file, which is wrong. I suggest that in case help2man isn't found, the dummy version of info.1 gets removed (perhaps by adding `|| rm -f $@ && false' to the rules using HELP2MAN). Although I could change this in Texinfo as you suggest, it seems to me it affects every package using help2man and there's no reason to change Texinfo specially. The "missing" script (which is what gets invoked when help2man is missing) is clearly creating the target file with that .ab line intentionally. I believe it does so because the idea is to let potential contributors get on with the "real" work of the package without bothering with help2man. If it didn't generate the target, the error message would persist forever. (It also hardly matters if anyone not making a release generates the real man pages.) And it throws the make error so the user is likely to actually see the issue and can install help2man if they so desire. So I'm not seeing any useful change to make here ... ? karl