Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Volker Reichelt]

Hi Gaby,

the info files seem to be missing in the gcc 3.2.2 release so that no
info-files will be available on systems without makeinfo or an outdated
version of makeinfo :-(

Is there anything that can be done about that unfortunate situation?

Regards,
Volker

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Christian Cornelssen]

Hello,

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Volker Reichelt wrote:

> the info files seem to be missing in the gcc 3.2.2 release so that no
> info-files will be available on systems without makeinfo or an outdated
> version of makeinfo :-(

$ tar tjf gcc-3.2.2.tar.bz2 | fgrep .info
$

Indeed.

However, even though my build platform has only makeinfo-4.1
installed, I find (after building) a bunch of '*.info*',
including

./gcc/f/g77.info
./gcc/doc/cpp.info
./gcc/doc/gcc.info
./gcc/doc/gccint.info
./gcc/doc/cppinternals.info
./gcc/java/gcj.info

(and of course *-1 etc.)
Are some important info files missing?

> Is there anything that can be done about that unfortunate situation?

If this is still a concern, I'd suggest unpacking the release tarball,
running makeinfo, tar it again and replace the versions in the
download area. (No suffix games here.) This saves us from having to
test the CVS checkout again.

Perhaps re-running the release script(s) from the 3.2.2 release,
without CVS actions, but with proper makeinfo available,
would do the regeneration.  If so, the release scripts should be
refined to test for a recent makeinfo.

Regards,

Christian Cornelssen

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Herbert Schmid]

Hello,

I had the same problem with Debian 3.0, because it ships with an
very old mkinfo.

I now use the one of unstable.

Yours,
Herbert

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Christian Cornelssen wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Volker Reichelt wrote:
>
> > the info files seem to be missing in the gcc 3.2.2 release so that no
> > info-files will be available on systems without makeinfo or an outdated
> > version of makeinfo :-(
>
> $ tar tjf gcc-3.2.2.tar.bz2 | fgrep .info
> $
>
> Indeed.
>
> However, even though my build platform has only makeinfo-4.1
> installed, I find (after building) a bunch of '*.info*',
> including
>
> ./gcc/f/g77.info
> ./gcc/doc/cpp.info
> ./gcc/doc/gcc.info
> ./gcc/doc/gccint.info
> ./gcc/doc/cppinternals.info
> ./gcc/java/gcj.info
>
> (and of course *-1 etc.)
> Are some important info files missing?
>
> > Is there anything that can be done about that unfortunate situation?
>
> If this is still a concern, I'd suggest unpacking the release tarball,
> running makeinfo, tar it again and replace the versions in the
> download area. (No suffix games here.) This saves us from having to
> test the CVS checkout again.
>
> Perhaps re-running the release script(s) from the 3.2.2 release,
> without CVS actions, but with proper makeinfo available,
> would do the regeneration.  If so, the release scripts should be
> refined to test for a recent makeinfo.
>
> Regards,
>
> Christian Cornelssen
>

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Christian Cornelssen wrote:

> However, even though my build platform has only makeinfo-4.1
> installed, I find (after building) a bunch of '*.info*',
> including

4.1 is sufficient for the 3.2 branch.  It's 3.3 and mainline that need
4.2.

> If this is still a concern, I'd suggest unpacking the release tarball,
> running makeinfo, tar it again and replace the versions in the
> download area. (No suffix games here.) This saves us from having to
> test the CVS checkout again.

You should never create a new tarball with the same name - this will just
create problems for people using diffs.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Christian Cornelssen]

Hi,

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Joseph S. Myers wrote:

> 4.1 is sufficient for the 3.2 branch.  It's 3.3 and mainline that need
> 4.2.

Good, thanks for the info.

> You should never create a new tarball with the same name - this will just
> create problems for people using diffs.

In this case, existing files would not change, just new ones would get
added. "cvs rdiff" would not be affected. If you mean diffs between
actual release tar contents, then this would matter for diff users
without makeinfo.

Currently, both complete tar users and diff users would not get info
files other than by makeinfo, thus updating the tarball would help at
least the tar users. For the rest, I think that confusion about
additional release suffixes would be greater than the casual
inconvenience of having to install makeinfo. Don't you think that
typical users will download gcc-3.2.2.tar.*z*, regardless of whether
versions with additional suffixes exist?

Moreover, makeinfo comes as part of the texinfo package which also
contains the info reader, so people with the reader also have
makeinfo. The only info users without makeinfo are then emacs users,
experienced enough to invoke the info-reader mode, which is, ahem,
described in an emacs info file...

I think we should not take that too seriously. :-)

Regards,

Christian Cornelssen

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Christian Cornelssen wrote:
> Moreover, makeinfo comes as part of the texinfo package which also
> contains the info reader, so people with the reader also have
> makeinfo. The only info users without makeinfo are then emacs users,
> experienced enough to invoke the info-reader mode, which is, ahem,
> described in an emacs info file...

I am regularily using tkInfo, for example, and I suppose many others
are also using alternate info readers (though, my operating system of
choice at work comes with makeinfo 4.2).

Unfortunately, I don't have the time to hack this by myself, but the
real problem here is that our release script failed to diagnose this
issue and abort the release process.

Any volunteer to do a bit of hacking in
$GCC_SOURCE/maintainer-scripts/gcc_release?

Gerald
-- 
Gerald "Jerry"   pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at   http://www.pfeifer.com/gerald/

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Christian Cornelssen wrote:

> added. "cvs rdiff" would not be affected. If you mean diffs between
> actual release tar contents, then this would matter for diff users
> without makeinfo.

I mean the diffs supplied between the release tarballs.

> inconvenience of having to install makeinfo. Don't you think that
> typical users will download gcc-3.2.2.tar.*z*, regardless of whether
> versions with additional suffixes exist?

I expect they would have downloaded gcc-3.2.tar.*z* when 3.2 came out,
downloaded the diffs to 3.2.1 (not the whole tarball) when 3.2.1 came out,
the diffs to 3.2.2 (which remove the info files) when 3.2.2 came out and
will download the diffs to 3.2.3 when 3.2.3 comes out.  To build 3.2.3
they will unpack the tarball and apply successive diffs; this will fail if
the 3.2.3 diffs patch info files in the expectation they were present,
because they were generated against an updated release tarball.  The diffs
are exact diffs between the tarball contents (provided you apply them with
GNU patch; otherwise, diffs between binary message catalogs might cause
problems).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28@cam.ac.uk

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Volker Reichelt]

On  6 Feb, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Christian Cornelssen wrote:
> 
>> If this is still a concern, I'd suggest unpacking the release tarball,
>> running makeinfo, tar it again and replace the versions in the
>> download area. (No suffix games here.) This saves us from having to
>> test the CVS checkout again.
> 
> You should never create a new tarball with the same name - this will just
> create problems for people using diffs.

How about a tar file that just contains the info files?
You just unpack it in your info directory and you're done.

Regards,
Volker

Re: Info-files missing in gcc 3.2.2

[Joe Buck]

On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> > You should never create a new tarball with the same name - this will just
> > create problems for people using diffs.

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 07:28:57PM +0100, Christian Cornelssen wrote:
> In this case, existing files would not change, just new ones would get
> added. "cvs rdiff" would not be affected. If you mean diffs between
> actual release tar contents, then this would matter for diff users
> without makeinfo.

There's another problem: we can't re-use the same name because
of the widespread confusion it would cause.  You'll even get people
worrying about Trojans when MD5 sums on tarballs don't match.
Given widespread worry about such issues, we simply cannot quietly
replace one set of tarballs with another set that has the same names,
ever.

> Currently, both complete tar users and diff users would not get info
> files other than by makeinfo, thus updating the tarball would help at
> least the tar users. For the rest, I think that confusion about
> additional release suffixes would be greater than the casual
> inconvenience of having to install makeinfo. Don't you think that
> typical users will download gcc-3.2.2.tar.*z*, regardless of whether
> versions with additional suffixes exist?

If we withdraw the tarball and produce another, we have to rename it.
There's precedent for that; in such cases names like

gcc-3.2.2a.tar.bz2

would be used (this has been done when a packaging error occurred that
did not affect the compiler source).

However, I don't think that this problem is severe enough to justify
such things.  I would suggest adding a new tarball containing only
the info files, for those who care; distros packaging gcc will be
re-arranging things and can run makeinfo themselves.