bugGNU Octave - Bugs: bug #36903, configure misses makeinfo as a...

 
 

bug #36903: configure misses makeinfo as a dependency

Submitted by:  Carnë Draug <carandraug>
Submitted on:  Fri 20 Jul 2012 01:42:29 PM UTC  
 
Category: Configuration and Build SystemSeverity: 3 - Normal
Priority: 5 - NormalItem Group: Installation Failure
Status: FixedAssigned to: None
Originator Name: Open/Closed: Closed
Release: 3.6.2Operating System: Any

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Mon 25 Feb 2013 09:16:05 AM UTC, comment #16:

Ah, sorry, I thought it meant "fixed in 3.6.2" instead of reported in this version. Which was why I assumed this fix was present in my version..

Yes agree, this is not a critical bug. No problems then.

Yngve Inntjore Levinsen <eothred>
Fri 22 Feb 2013 04:27:25 PM UTC, comment #15:

3.6.4 is on the stable branch of Octave. The patch was committed to the development branch which will become 3.8.0 or 4.0.0 depending on what the next release is.

This wasn't a critical fix that needed to be backported to stable. Incidentally, if you are using a 3.6.4 tarball you shouldn't need to build the documentation because it has already been pre-built and shipped inside the tarball.

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Fri 22 Feb 2013 01:37:01 PM UTC, comment #14:

Hi,

Just tried to compile octave 3.6.4 now on a machine that did not have makeinfo installed (texinfo package on RHEL). I figured it was documentation and used --disable-docs in configure. Tried to compile again, but it still failed because it did not manage to create AUTHORS file (or something like that).

This is very late in the compilation process, so would be very good if the configure script could at least check if makeinfo is present and exit otherwise with info that this package is needed.

Thanks!

Yngve Inntjore Levinsen <eothred>
Wed 08 Aug 2012 02:47:02 PM UTC, comment #13:

I just committed a patch to check for makeinfo as a dependency (http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/25200c04bc25). Hopefully this takes care of 90% of the issues. If we find people with makeinfo installed, but still unable to build, then we can figure out exactly what functionality within makeinfo we need to test for in configure.ac.

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Wed 01 Aug 2012 04:28:51 PM UTC, comment #12:

The version that I know works is:

>makeinfo --version

makeinfo (GNU texinfo) 4.13

This comes with the package texinfo version 4.13.

I have tried other versions, but without success.
This has been the "official" version for quite a while.
And, the Texlive folks no longer support texinfo, so
it may be the current version for some time.

Michael Godfrey <godfrey>
Project Member
Tue 31 Jul 2012 05:51:59 PM UTC, comment #11:

Michael, do you have any information on what minimum version of makeinfo is required?

I can add just a bare test for the presence of makeinfo, but if we want to also check versions or capabilities then I need that data as well.

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Sun 29 Jul 2012 11:33:51 PM UTC, comment #10:

After a little exploring, it is definitely the case that Octave requires the makeinfo program both for ordinary operation and for building a distribution. So, as a start on this issue configure.ac should be modified to add a test for the presence of 'makeinfo'.

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Sun 29 Jul 2012 12:29:47 AM UTC, comment #9:

The better choice is to require texinfo as a
dependency. But, there is also an issue with
versions of texinfo and its support status.

Michael Godfrey <godfrey>
Project Member
Sun 29 Jul 2012 12:11:25 AM UTC, comment #8:

What do you mean by installed? That I need to run make install? Does ./run-octave suffice? If so

Sorry, when I wrote texinfo on the title and bug report I meant makeinfo (texinfo is the name of the Debian package that has it. and I keep confusing them). I know that I don't have makeinfo, I know that's the lack of it that's causing this.

My idea of the bug is whether configure should check for it and disable help somehow, or if it should be counted as a dependency.

Carnë Draug <carandraug>
Project Member
Sat 28 Jul 2012 07:56:59 PM UTC, comment #7:

Carnë, could you try the following with an installed version of Octave on the same machine that is failing?

I'm guessing that this will fail. Judging from the stderr output it seems like you are missing makeinfo.

Not requiring Texinfo for building Octave really means not requiring all of the libraries necessary to produce Postscript and PDF output. I believe makeinfo is still a requirement. If that is the case then maybe we need to put a check in configure.ac for that in the same way we have a check for sed or perl.

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Sat 28 Jul 2012 07:11:50 PM UTC, comment #6:

Re-posting the last comment which was cut short by the markup language on Savannah.

No, there's more fuctions failing:

Also, the `make check' output looks really weird with stderr breaking up the
nice list of tests passed:

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Sat 28 Jul 2012 06:59:41 PM UTC, comment #5:

Not sure what happened to the last comment...

*scripts/help/get_first_help_sentence.m

*scripts/help/help.m

*scripts/help/unimplemented.m

  • test_error

Plus, it also breaks the nice formatting of the tests:

Carnë Draug <carandraug>
Project Member
Sat 28 Jul 2012 06:53:43 PM UTC, comment #4:

No, there's more fuctions failing:

  • scripts/help/get_first_help_sentence.m
Carnë Draug <carandraug>
Project Member
Mon 23 Jul 2012 03:44:55 PM UTC, comment #3:

Are there multiple tests or just one? I get the following error for doc.m:

If it is only this one test which is failing we could probably just eliminate it.

Rik <rik5>
Project Administrator
Fri 20 Jul 2012 06:24:53 PM UTC, comment #2:

This was done with the --disable-docs flag. But then, some tests from help related functions fail. Shouls those functions check for it before running the test? Should they be disabled?

Carnë Draug <carandraug>
Project Member
Fri 20 Jul 2012 05:02:38 PM UTC, comment #1:

Simplest would be to disable the doc part of the build.
There was talk about doing this sometime ago...

Michael Godfrey <godfrey>
Project Member
Fri 20 Jul 2012 01:42:29 PM UTC, original submission:

Hi

not sure if this is being too pedantic but if texinfo is not installed on the system, "make check" will fail tests. Does this mean that texinfo is a build dependency or an external package? Should configure do something about this? Fail or disable something?

Carnë

Carnë Draug <carandraug>
Project Member

 

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    Follow 4 latest changes.

    Date Changed By Updated Field Previous Value => Replaced By
    Wed 08 Aug 2012 02:47:02 PM UTCrik5StatusNeed Info=>Fixed
      Open/ClosedOpen=>Closed
    Sun 29 Jul 2012 11:33:51 PM UTCrik5Summaryconfigure misses texinfo=>configure misses makeinfo as a dependency
    Mon 23 Jul 2012 03:44:55 PM UTCrik5StatusNone=>Need Info

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