On Thu, Feb 24, 2022 at 01:52:21AM -0500, Mike Frysinger wrote: > On 19 Feb 2022 15:03, Patrice Dumas wrote: > > In Texinfo, we have a texinfo manual which is automatically generated > > from Pod sections from Texinfo perl modules. When this generated manual > > is removed, automake cannot run anymore. To workaround this issue, we > > have a generation of a fake manual that contains only @setfilename > > manual.info > > in the autogen.sh script that can be used to bootstrap some other > > autogenerated things, in particular Makefile fragments. However, this > > is not practical, in particular if the generated manual is removed and > > the Makefile.am file is modified, one need to redo a fake manual in > > order to have things being ok again. > > > > It seems to me that one way to avoid the issue would be if automake used > > only the texinfo manual name to construct the rules. It would probably > > be a good thing to do irrespective of this issue, as @setfilename is not > > as important as it used to be, now it is fully optional, and we probably > > should consider as a best practice not to have @setfilename in Texinfo > > manuals. > > > > The manual is in doc/tp_api in the texinfo sources, it is tp_api.texi. > > automake already has some fallback logic if @setfilename isn't set -- it > uses the basename of the source file and changes .texi to .info. but it > doesn't work if the file doesn't exist. i think that should be easy to > support. > > --- a/bin/automake.in > +++ b/bin/automake.in > @@ -3062,7 +3062,8 @@ sub scan_texinfo_file > { > my ($filename) = @_; > > - my $texi = new Automake::XFile "< $filename"; > + my $source = -e $filename ? $filename : "/dev/null"; > + my $texi = new Automake::XFile "< $source"; > verb "reading $filename"; > > my ($outfile, $vfile); > > if this is the only thing you need, then i won't think any harder about it.
I have not tested but it looks good (or a variation with the same effect if /dev/null is not portable). The only issue I see is if after the file is generated the @setfilename is not the same as the file base name there will be errors. I do not think that automake should support that setup, but maybe it would be good to state it in the documentation. Maybe something like: "Texinfo files that are generated should have a basename matching @setfilename, if there is a @setfilename." Thanks! -- Pat