Re: Contributing to Emacs Development

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 01:58:20 -0600
> From: Manoj Srivastava <address@hidden>
> 
>       The default would be, for most users, to just say info gnus or
>  info emacs; and that would lead one to $INFODIR/gnus, et. al. This
>  default file shall be a symbolic link managed by the alternatives
>  mechanism, so installing a new gnus shall do the right thing.

Yes.  (But see my comments elsewhere about symlinks).

>       If you asked for a specific emacs version, and you then follow
>  the link to gnus there, I presume you are seeking information about
>  the bundled gnus.

Yes.

>       However, unless something is done to C-h C-f, the information
>  provided would be for the default version.

Not necessarily.  All we need to make sure is that the Info reader
looks first in the same directory where the current Info file (the one
which you were browsing when you pressed C-h C-f) lives.  The
stand-alone Info reader already does that, and I'm almost sure Emacs
does that as well (if not, it can be easily changed so it does).

If I'm right, then putting different versions into subdirectories will
not break C-h C-f, whether or not you use the default `emacs' file.

>       If we have each emacsen re-order the Iinfo-path, then we shall
>  fail to see the info for indepndently installed packages, like
>  gnus.

Not necessarily.  A package that is likely to be updated
asynchronously, even though it comes bundled, should adopt the same
version-related directory structure as Emacs.  Thus, you will have
gnus-5.7/gnus, gnus-5.8/gnus, etc., and the default `gnus' will point
to one of them.

>       We would have to modify install-info to handle manipulation od
>  the symbolic links

I'd like to avoid using filesystem features such as symlinks, since
they are not portable outside Unix and GNU/Linux systems.  We could
simulate symlinks via some new feature in the DIR file.  We almost
have the infrastructure for that, in the indirect tag tables.