Re: texinfo-4.6 patches (Cygwin, AM_MAINTAINER_MODE)

[Thomas Klausner]

Hi Karl!

>     texinfo is a host tool in cross-building NetBSD, 
> 
> I'm surprised, doesn't everything come with info files?  They should ...
> Or is it for some other purpose?

I'm not sure I understand the question. texinfo is also in NetBSD's base system;
I guess it's a host tool mainly to create info/dir entries during cross-builds.

> I installed this patch, although I put it in a different place so as to
> keep all the O_BINARY-and-nothing-else settings together.  Please check
> that I didn't screw up the conditionals ... (new version attached).

Yes, this seems to work fine. Thanks.

> Texinfo is imported into the TeX Live repository as well, with lots of
> timestamp problems.  But I've never entirely understood why.  Can you
> help me understand?  Is it that the timestamps from the original
> distribution aren't preserved when you import them?  (And thus the
> "maintainer" rules get triggered when not really needed.)

I'm not sure about the details, but the problem is that the time
stamps on checked out copies of files do not have any useful relation
to the original timestamps. E.g., sometimes the timestamp on a file
just gets set to the time of its last change via 'cvs update'.  In
particular this means that e.g. a Makefile.in may be newer than
the corresponding Makefile.am. Without AM_MAINTAINER_MODE, automake
includes rules to regenerate Makefile.in if this happens, which
will fail in lots of cases (read-only fs, no automake/autoconf
installed, ...).

Cheers,
 Thomas

-- 
Thomas Klausner - address@hidden
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find
out, which is the exact opposite. -- Bertrand Russell