findutils @4.9.0 does not install (register) all its texinfo file in dir file

[ballapete (Peter "Pete" Dyballa)]

sh-3.2# pushd /opt/local/share/info ; for INFO in *.info ; do INFO="`echo $INFO | awk -F. '{ print $1 }'`"; printf "»» $INFO: ";  if [ `grep "\($INFO\)" dir | wc -l` -gt 0 ] ; then echo OK ; else echo "** missing **" ; fi; done

reports

»» gfind: ** missing **

Another INFO file, find-maint.info, is already registered as

* Maintaining Findutils: (find-maint).  Maintaining GNU findutils

but all hints of gfind are missing in dir file.

install-info gfind info dir

would do the job. But gfind.info contains this section:

 20 INFO-DIR-SECTION Individual utilities
 21 START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
 22 * find: (find)Invoking find.                    Finding and acting on files.
 23 * locate: (find)Invoking locate.                Finding files in a database.
 24 * updatedb: (find)Invoking updatedb.            Building the locate database.
 25 * xargs: (find)Invoking xargs.                  Operating on many files.
 26 END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY

which sends the info utility to a file find.info which does not exist.

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

Can you elaborate a bit, in terms of how I would reproduce this in the context of info gfind?

[ballapete (Peter "Pete" Dyballa)]

The correct command should be install-info gfind.info dir, not install-info gfind info dir.

#66846 has some additional info.

My shell script checks whether the file /opt/local/share/info/dir contains an entry that describes each of the INFO files in /opt/local/share/info. If such an entry exists then the process of info installation had happened.

Another problem exists from renaming GNU utilities, find becomes gfind but it is tried to lookup information in a file find.info.

If none of the INFO files in the contents of findutils port is mentioned in dir then its installation was incomplete. In this case any invocation of info gfind or info find-maint will fail.

If the find.info file was installed by port as ginfo.info than you will not get information from info find or ìnfo locate or info updatedb or info xargs because there is no file find.info as my excerpt shows. (But beware here, info can also display man pages when no info entry is available!) The cause for the failure is that the INFO-DIR-SECTION in gfind.info has not been updated to track the renaming.

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

All of the low-level technical detail will be helpful eventually, but first I want to understand what issues this causes for our users.

What reference(s), functionality, etc, doesn't work?

Thus far, that hasn't been explained. So I don't even have enough of an understanding to test before and after.

Does that make sense?

[ballapete (Peter "Pete" Dyballa)]

Although INFO files are installed their info(rmation) is unavailable when invoking the info command on the command line to retrieve it.

Is this the statement you need?

Besides, these useless files use up disk space, make the MacPorts db grow (if applicable – I do not know whether all installed files are registered), and also bloat the archives. Handling the packages is more complicated than necessary for the little effect of upgrading a few useful files. The bigger the archive files the less network bandwidth is available for playing games or producing fake news.

I think this is now very complete. Or should I explain again and in a different way why info updatedb does not work?

I do have problems to understand which sort of information you are needing.

[kencu (Ken)]

Ventura has no info command

% which info
info not found

and looking for 5 minutes, I can't find any port that provides an info command either.

so it looks like info files are on their last legs anyway, based on that. Perhaps all info files, everywhere, should then just be deleted?

[ballapete (Peter "Pete" Dyballa)]

I mentioned once that info is part of texinfo. Elder versions of Mac OS X have a native copy of this command. X11 has an xinfo command. Public domain knows of tkinfo or tkman. GNU Emacs has its own info command.