On 12/26/20 4:07 PM, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote: > install-info does not have an replacement, like say egrep/fgrep -- > this is how we install a dir entry for a info manual. Removing > install-info would be a regression.
In practice, GNU installation procedures use install-info in the way that's described in the proposed patch: they test whether install-info is available, and if so they use it. The make-stds.texi file already recomments this practice in its "Standard Targets" section. The proposed patch is doing merely making make-stds coherent; it's not advocating any change to existing best practice for install-info. The example entry in '(standards) Standard Targets' is I think orthogonal, it is for the benefit of the user where installing the node entry is not considered an error but only a "warning" (and then some extra checks because we want to treat real errors as such). Which is quite different from the behaviour we have for other programs -- if you are missing md5sum (or even fgrep) you'd get a hard error. So I really don't see how it makes it coherent, having install-info as a "safe" requirement makes logical sense since our prefered documentation format is info (the original rationale for removing install-info was "its GNU specific"), and why we do some extra sanity checks is to be nice to the user. The change also removes install-info the only rule where it makes sense to use install-info -- post-installation.