Arch Linux

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Guidelines for handling of info files

I know that in repo packages docs and info files are normally stripped away. Since I like info files, I want to keep them and removed the wellknown ! before the DOCs in makepkg.conf.

In new packages I guess info files should go to /usr/share/info, for easyly being stripped away. But I miss some further guidelines. How are the "dir" files to be handled? Has this to be done in the install file or are there some tricks that allow us to handle this within the PKGBUILD?

It would be great if someone could write a little helper and put it into this forum or the wiki.

Thank you for any replies.

Last edited by Stefan Husmann (2008-03-08 21:33:22)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Guidelines for handling of info files

What do you mean by "dir file"?

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Re: Guidelines for handling of info files

What do you mean by "dir file"?

the dir file is the top of the info tree. You can generate it with install-info. The info tree gets into the game when you call the program info without any parameters.

E.g. if you have a file /usr/share/info/imaxima.info, you can do a

install-info /usr/share/info/imaxima.info /usr/share/info/dir

and imaxima.info will be included into the tree.

I encountered the problem that many packages in AUR do have a file "dir" and try to install it to /usr/share/info, trying to overwrite the existing file there. Since most Arch users strip away their info files, and official packages do so, this isn't noticed very often.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: Guidelines for handling of info files

See examples:

abs
find /var/abs -maxdepth 4 -type f -name PKGBUILD -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i "/usr/share/info"

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Re: Guidelines for handling of info files

Thank you for the good idea and for the great one-liner. On first sight there seem to be no rules to be followed:

- emacs in extra deletes the dir file an explicitely gzips the info files (good),
- gnucash in extra deletes all info files (bad),
- and in community there are packages which have an -info-suffix in their name, so I guess they install info-files only. These deserve deeper investigation.

I think info files should not be deleted by the package, this decision should be left to the user who can handle it with the !DOCS option in his makepkg.conf.

Stefan Husmann

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-07

Posts: 1,391

Re: Guidelines for handling of info files

So I would like to make the following suggestions.

* Info files should not been removed explicitely by the package.

* Info files should be stored in /usr/info or, better, in /usr/share/info.

* The package should not include a file /usr/info/dir or /usr/share/info/dir.

* Packages containing info files should install them using the command
  install-info in the postinstall-function of the install-file.
 
  E.g.

install-info /usr/share/info/octave.info /usr/share/info/dir