Re: getting included texinfo files interface

[Gavin Smith]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 03:57:24PM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> With an objective to improve gendoc.sh texinfo sources tarball
> generation code, I implemented, in the developpement version in git
> the possibility with texi2any to output the @include files included
> from a manual, without doing anything else.  A bit like the -M option of
> cpp.  For now this feature is set through the customization option
> SHOW_INCLUDE_FILE_PATHS.

Is this so that gendoc.sh (a gnulib script, I believe), can get the list
of files so it can include them in a Texinfo source tarball?   How do
projects currently get the right files included, or do they not manage
to do this?  Have you made changes to this script to process the list
of included files?


> For example, if mymanual.texi contains in itself or in an included
> file
> 
> @include toto/aa.texi
> @include version
> 
> Then calling texi2any like:
> 
> texi2any -c SHOW_INCLUDE_FILE_PATHS=1 mymanual.texi
> 
> outputs on stdout as sole effect:
> 
> toto/aa.texi
> version
> 
> 
> Is that interface to the feature ok?  Would there be another way to
> specify included files that is common across diverse applications?
> Should we try to do something like -M?

I don't like the idea of outputting Makefile rules but a list of included
files makes sense.  I feel that a command-line argument (--trace-includes?)
would be better as the interface for this.