Re: dvi, pdf rules: incorrect invocation of texi2dvi, texi2pdf

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Bruno, Karl,

thanks for the report.

* Bruno Haible wrote on Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 01:04:36PM CEST:
> Automake generates rules for creating DVI and PDF formatted documentation
> that rely on the TEXINPUTS variable. This variable appears to have not the
> desired effect in recent TeX distributions.
> 
> How to reproduce:
> 
> - Install texinfo 4.13 in your PATH.
> - Unpack GNU hello 2.4.
> $ ./configure
> - Get the newest texinfo.tex:
> $ gnulib-tool --copy-file build-aux/texinfo.tex
> $ cd doc
> - edit hello.texi, inserting an @arrow{} in the first paragraph, after
>   "friendly greeting". The macro @arrow is supported since texinfo 4.12.

Weird.  TEXINPUTS works for me.  I have
ii  texlive-base-bin   2007.dfsg.1-2      TeX Live: Essential binaries
ii  texinfo            4.11.dfsg.1-4      Documentation system for on-line 
information and pri
texi2dvi (GNU Texinfo 4.13) 1.138


and exactly the above sequence gets me to a working DVI; see below.
Even the TeX versions are identical to yours on this Ubuntu system.

$ make dvi
[...]
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/ralf/tmp/hello/hello/doc'
TEXINPUTS="../build-aux:$TEXINPUTS" \
        MAKEINFO='/bin/sh /home/ralf/tmp/hello/hello/build-aux/missing --run 
makeinfo   -I .' \
        texi2dvi hello.texi
This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6)
 file:line:error style messages enabled.
 %&-line parsing enabled.
entering extended mode
(./hello.texi
(/home/ralf/tmp/hello/hello/build-aux/texinfo.tex
Loading texinfo [version 2009-03-28.05]: pdf, fonts, markup, glyphs,
page headings, tables, conditionals, indexing, sectioning, toc, environments,
defuns, macros, cross references, insertions,
(/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/epsf/epsf.tex
This is `epsf.tex' v2.7.3 <23 July 2005>
) localization, formatting, and turning on texinfo input format.)
(./version.texi) [1] [2] [-1] Chapter 1
Underfull \hbox (badness 2181) in paragraph at lines 157--161
 @texttt address@hidden Verify that all source files us-ing @texttt _()[] @t
extrm are in-cluded for trans-la-tion in
Chapter 2 [1] Chapter 3 [2] Chapter 4 [3] Appendix A [4] (./fdl.texi [5]
[6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]) (Concept index) [12] [13] )
(see the transcript file for additional information)
Output written on hello.dvi (16 pages, 42356 bytes).
Transcript written on hello.log.
[...]

> Suggestion: Can you change the invocations of $(TEXI2DVI) and $(TEXI2PDF) so
> as to include the directory where texinfo.tex resides, through a -I option?

Sure could, but I'd first like to know what causes this difference in
build systems, and whether -I is the official way to do things now,
and how far backward-compatible -I is, and whether there are other
programs typically substituted for $(TEXI2DVI) or $(TEXI2PDF) and
whether they understand -I too.

Thanks,
Ralf