Cygwin: texi2dvi stumbles over texinfo.tex (was: failed checks for automake 1.9.6)

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Markus, everyone,

Thanks for the bug report against Automake, and apologies for the
cross-post.

* Markus Elfring wrote on Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 04:02:05PM CEST:
> 
> I have got the summary "14 of 552 tests failed (15 tests were not run)".
> 
> => I have appended the results of the command "env VERBOSE=1
> TESTS='acoutqnl.test acoutbs.test acsilent.test acsubst.test
> auxdir2.test cond17.test txinfo3.test txinfo5.test txinfo13.test
> txinfo16.test txinfo18.test txinfo22.test txinfo23.test txinfo24.test
> txinfo25.test txinfo28.test version7.test' make check" to this
> message. It was executed under a Cygwin environment.
> - autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.59
> - gcc (GCC) 3.4.4 (cygming special) (gdc 0.12, using dmd 0.125)
> - GNU Make 3.80
> 
> Are any unknown issues shown?

Yes, I think those issues are not solved.  All the failures you observe
are essentially identical, similar to this:

| make[1]: Entering directory 
`/cygdrive/e/Programme/GNU/automake-1.9.6/tests/testSubDir/txinfo3-1.0/_build'
| TEXINPUTS="..:$TEXINPUTS" \
| MAKEINFO='/bin/sh 
/cygdrive/e/Programme/GNU/automake-1.9.6/tests/testSubDir/txinfo3-1.0/missing 
--run makeinfo   -I ..' \
| texi2dvi ../textutils.texi
| This is e-TeXk, Version 3.141592-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.4)
|  file:line:error style messages enabled.
|  %&-line parsing enabled.
| ---! /var/lib/texmf/web2c/etex.fmt was written by pdfetex
| (Fatal format file error; I'm stymied)
| /usr/bin/texi2dvi: texinfo.tex appears to be broken, quitting.
| make[1]: *** [textutils.dvi] Error 1
| make[1]: Leaving directory 
`/cygdrive/e/Programme/GNU/automake-1.9.6/tests/testSubDir/txinfo3-1.0/_build'
| make: *** [distcheck] Error 2
| FAIL: txinfo3.test

I can reproduce them even with CVS Automake, and with several versions
of texinfo.tex, including one from earlier this week, on a Cygwin from
earlier this week (but not on other system)s.  A web search shows other
instances of this bug (outside of test suites), all without solution:
https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=15372
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.octave.general/10644/

I have no idea whether Cygwin, texinfo.tex, or texi2dvi is to blame, so
let's ask the texinfo people whether they know more about this, or
whether we should write to address@hidden  To reproduce, you could
do this, for example:
  wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.9.6.tar.bz2
  tar xvjf automake-1.9.6.tar.bz2
  cd automake-1.9.6
  ./configure && make
  cd tests
  env VERBOSE=x TESTS=txinfo3.test make -e check

This will show the failure; the corresponding source tree will then be in
  automake-1.9.6/tests/testSubDir/txinfo3-1.0
with a build tree in
  automake-1.9.6/tests/testSubDir/txinfo3-1.0/_build
for further inspection.  AFAIK only the .dvi creation is affected, PDF,
info and HTML should work, though.

For reference, the textutils.texi file looks like this:
| \input texinfo
| @setfilename textutils
| @settitle main
| @node Top
| Hello walls.
| @bye

Any help would be greatly appreciated.  

Cheers,
Ralf