Hello, Gavin Smith wrote on Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 07:08:34PM +0000: > On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 12:30:38PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: >> At 2026-01-17T19:13:35+0100, Patrice Dumas wrote: >>> On Sat, Jan 17, 2026 at 11:40:27AM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>>>> A colleague, Alexis Hildebrandt, pointed out that it's no longer >>>> necessary in Texinfo input to maintain node pointers (arguments >>>> after the first to a @node command). [...] I can't find a >>>> straightforward mention of it in the Texinfo NEWS file. >>> I cannot tell if it was already present in previous releases, but I >>> just had a look at the code of Texinfo 5.0 and it seems to me that the >>> nodes without any directions have directions completed. >> Thanks, Patrice! Looks like I could have put this change in for groff >> 1.23.0, which bumped our Texinfo dependency from 4.8 to 5.0. >> >> https://cgit.git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/commit/?id=986d2a5b2d908c9d129f6d486e8839c2ec24f761 > It's a lot older than Texinfo 5.0, as far as i gather. [...] > This comment is unchanged from Texinfo 3.1, from 1993. (I haven't > tried building any of these old releases to check how automatic node > pointers work, though.) > > I don't know if many of the releases in the Texinfo 3.* series are > still available anywhere. On ftp.gnu.org there is only 3.0, 3.1, 3.9 > and 3.12 (I remember some of those were not original tar distributions > and were sources I salvaged from other places on the Internet.) For what it's worth, OpenBSD-current ist still shipping with this very ancient texinfo in the base system: $ uname -a OpenBSD isnote.usta.de 7.8 GENERIC.MP#209 amd64 $ sysctl kern.version kern.version=OpenBSD 7.8-current (GENERIC.MP) #209: Fri Jan 16 00:14:51 MST 2026 [email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP $ makeinfo --version makeinfo (GNU texinfo) 4.8 Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. We are unwilling to update to a newer version. If i recall correctly, the main reason is licensing, because newer TexInfo is no longer available under the slightly more free GPLv2 and now comes with the even more encumbered GPLv3. If i recall correctly, it is no longer possible to build recent groff texinfo documentation on OpenBSD for that reason (i did not re-check right now, but my recollection agrees with Branden's statement above). Having the OpenBSD groff port depend on installing a newer texinfo package at build time is not an option for us because we depend on buildiing groff very early in the bulk build cycle, so delaying building groff after building texinfo would risk circular dependencies. Still, it's not a practical problem for us because the groff release tarballs include pre-built texinfo documention that the port can install without needing makeinfo(1) at all: $ pkg_info -L groff | grep -F .info /usr/local/info/groff.info /usr/local/info/groff.info-1 /usr/local/info/groff.info-2 /usr/local/info/groff.info-3 Yours, Ingo -- Ingo Schwarze <[email protected]> http://www.openbsd.org/ <[email protected]> http://mandoc.bsd.lv/ <[email protected]>
