Hi Bruno,

At 2026-07-24T00:38:10+0200, Bruno Haible wrote:
> G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Here's the "real failure", I believe.
> > 
> > > ../../../../../doc/groff.dvi.t2d/doc!groff.t2d/dvi/src/groff.texi:13156:
> > > epsf.tex not found, images will be ignored.
> 
> Yes, that's my understanding as well.
> 
> > > My recommendation regarding epsf.tex is to take it from Gnulib, as
> > > described in
> > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bison/2025-07/msg00004.html
> > > .

Filed as <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68566>.

> > Not saying that this isn't good advice, but the root cause of this
> > problem, I believe, was my failure to properly manage "maintainer mode".
> > ...
> > Building from the distribution archive should _not_ prompt a rebuild of
> > any of the rendered forms of groff's Texinfo manual.
> 
> While this is a good guideline, in order to reduce the necessary build
> steps for people who build from a tarball, you can't really rely on
> the time stamps to be correct, in my experience. 20 years ago this was
> true because of HP-UX 'make'; nowadays it is true because of Haiku
> (which does not implement time stamps as required by POSIX). Also, the
> way I do multi-platform testing of tarballs sometimes, is to unpack
> the tarball, commit the unpacked files into git, and have the CI check
> them out from git; and this process kills the time stamps.

If I understand Make correctly, unreliable time stamps are not a threat
the way I've (post-rc2) applied "maintainer mode" to this scenario.

diff --git a/doc/doc.am b/doc/doc.am
index edf136697..774e9ab45 100644
--- a/doc/doc.am
+++ b/doc/doc.am
@@ -875,8 +875,7 @@ EXTRA_DIST += \
   $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_EPS) \
   $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_PNG)
 
-# maintainer mode targets
-
+if MAINTAINER_MODE
 $(DOC_GNU_EPS): doc/gnu.xpm
        $(AM_V_GEN)$(MKDIR_P) `dirname $@` \
        && if test "$(XPMTOPPM)" != found; then \
@@ -926,6 +925,19 @@ $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_EPS): doc/line-layout.roff pic groff 
troff grops \
 $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_PNG): $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_EPS)
        $(AM_V_GEN)$(MKDIR_P) `dirname $@` \
        && convert -density 300 $< PNG24:$@
+else
+$(DOC_GNU_EPS) \
+  $(DOC_GNU_PNG) \
+  $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_EPS) \
+  $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_PNG):
+       @:
+endif # MAINTAINER_MODE
+
+MAINTAINERCLEANFILES += \
+  $(DOC_GNU_EPS) \
+  $(DOC_GNU_PNG) \
+  $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_EPS) \
+  $(DOC_LINE_LAYOUT_PNG)
 
 # Local Variables:
 # fill-column: 72

If the files are out of date, a non-maintainer-mode build--as from a
distribution archive--will now simply leave the files alone.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff-commit/2026-07/msg00154.html

Regards,
Branden

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              • ... Collin Funk
              • ... Alexis (surryhill)
              • ... Collin Funk
              • ... G. Branden Robinson
              • ... Dave Kemper
              • ... Larry Kollar
              • ... Deri via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
  • ... Bruno Haible via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
    • ... G. Branden Robinson
      • ... Bruno Haible via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
        • ... G. Branden Robinson
      • ... G. Branden Robinson
        • ... Deri via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
          • ... Bruno Haible via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
      • ... Alexis (surryhill)
  • ... Bruno Haible via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
    • ... G. Branden Robinson
      • ... G. Branden Robinson
  • ... Bruno Haible via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software
    • ... G. Branden Robinson
      • ... Bruno Haible via discussion of the GNU roff typesetting system and related software

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