Re: Which component controls automake.info ?

[Mathieu Lirzin]

Hello,

Jeffrey Walton <address@hidden> writes:

> On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 10:00 AM, Mathieu Lirzin <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>> Jeffrey Walton <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> I'm trying to update Autoconf and Automake on an old CentOS system.
>>> The build is failing with:
>>>
>>>   MAKEINFO doc/automake.info
>>> /home/scripts/automake-1.15.1/lib/missing: line 81: makeinfo: command not 
>>> found
>>> ...
>> Documentation is already "built" in distributed releases so unless you
>> are modifying the ".texi" sources, 'makeinfo' shouldn't be required by
>> the build process.
>
> Maybe autoreconf is doing it. I need to use it on a lot of older
> systems, like CentOS 5 or my PowerMac G5.
>
> I use the old iron for testing. Most of the software is out of date.
>
>> Are you build from a tarball or the Git development repository?
>
> I'm using the latest release tarball. It is
> https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.15.1.tar.gz

Indeed the 'autoreconf' step might be the issue.  When building from a
release tarball the build/install process should only be "./configure &&
make && make install".  See the INSTALL file for more detailed
information.

The 'autoreconf' step is meant for developers and maintainers building
from the Git repository.  This step generates (among other things) the
"./configure" shell script that is then distributed in tarballs.  This
staged build process allows to separate developer dependencies
(Autoconf, Automake, Makeinfo, Help2man, ...) from regular dependency.

HTH.

-- 
Mathieu Lirzin
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