Re: cmp/diff

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   On 12/26/20 4:07 PM, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
   > install-info does not have an replacement, like say egrep/fgrep --
   > this is how we install a dir entry for a info manual.  Removing
   > install-info would be a regression.

   In practice, GNU installation procedures use install-info in the
   way that's described in the proposed patch: they test whether
   install-info is available, and if so they use it.  The
   make-stds.texi file already recomments this practice in its
   "Standard Targets" section. The proposed patch is doing merely
   making make-stds coherent; it's not advocating any change to
   existing best practice for install-info.

The example entry in '(standards) Standard Targets' is I think
orthogonal, it is for the benefit of the user where installing the
node entry is not considered an error but only a "warning" (and then
some extra checks because we want to treat real errors as such).
Which is quite different from the behaviour we have for other programs
-- if you are missing md5sum (or even fgrep) you'd get a hard error.

So I really don't see how it makes it coherent, having install-info as
a "safe" requirement makes logical sense since our prefered
documentation format is info (the original rationale for removing
install-info was "its GNU specific"), and why we do some extra sanity
checks is to be nice to the user.  The change also removes
install-info the only rule where it makes sense to use install-info --
post-installation.