Re: [help-texinfo] Re: Gentoo Linux some `Info' manuals missing index

[Karl Berry]

Hi Harry,

    Possibly something with the way gentoo installed cvs?

I can't picture that.

    What, if anything, do you think it means that a newly generated set
    of info files for cvs from the source texi, do not display this
    problem?

The Emacs bug is the Emacs bug, regardless.

    Is it normal for a package of new sources to have info files generated
    nearly 5 yrs ago?

Evidently it means that the CVS maintainers didn't update the Info files
in their tarball.  They should have.  That's a separate issue.

    Do you think it would still be considered a bug for emacs if newly
    generated info files from cvs work?

It depends on why the "old" info files don't work.

The only way I can imagine it not being a bug is the following: "new"
info files have a magic sequence to mark indexes.  That is not present
in the old Info files.  Perhaps the Emacs maintainers intentionally
decided to only support index searching when that magic sequence is
present.  If they made that decision, I think it wasn't a good decision,
but of course it's up to them.

If they didn't make that decision, it simply seems like a bug introduced
since 23.1 was released, based on the evidence at hand.

Anyway, there is no need to debate theories about it.  Send the files
that cause the error to emacs-devel and let them debug it.  It's their
program.

Best,
Karl