how to update the buggy version of texinfo?

kullmann · August 22, 2011, 10:48am

Hello,

in 11.4 the texi2dvi version is 1.135, based on texinfo version 4.13. Now these are old buggy versions (see e.g.
texi2dvi: locale-dependent error in egrep [A-z] ), causing that documentation can not be
built, for example when building gcc. Now one would hope that Suse provides updates (the latest version of
texinfo is 4.9), but I can’t find them?

It seems to me that the installation of texinfo is a bit more complicated, because of the integration with
your system, so I hesitate to install texinfo myself.

Yast should have a bug-reporting facility, where one could easily report such issues.

Hope somebody can help (we have to install various pieces of software, which call texi2dvi, which
then breaks, making the whole build breaks, and it would be not easy to change the build of these
systems).

Oliver

martin_helm · August 22, 2011, 11:06am

Maybe I misunderstood what you wrote, but do you really want to replace the
newer 4.13 with the older 4.9? Where is your info from that 4.9 is the
newest version, it is simply wrong: 4.9 is from 2007, have a look here
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/
tex2dvi is simply a script, you can give the new version from the link above
a try by simply downloading tex2dvi (it is a separate download) and copy it
to /usr/local/bin and check if it works better for you.

kullmann · August 22, 2011, 11:38am

Yes, you are right: I was too optimistic, thought there should be newer versions of texinfo, and
then I misread “4.13” as “4.1.3” (or “4.9” as “4.90”).
So then the only update in the texinfo-directory Index of /gnu/texinfo seems to be
the texi2dvi script there, hopefully reacting to the bug (also the tex-macros apparently have
been updated, but this doesn’t matter here).

I’m currently running the build (which takes some time), hoping that it solves the problem.

vodoo · August 22, 2011, 12:27pm

As a workaround you could fix the bug on your local installation. Here (I have 11.3) the patch would be:

--- texi2dvi.orig       2011-08-22 12:17:20.394886036 +0200
+++ texi2dvi    2011-08-22 12:18:27.293468413 +0200
@@ -1675,7 +1675,7 @@

   # If the COMMAND_LINE_FILENAME is not absolute (e.g., --debug.tex),
   # prepend `./' in order to avoid that the tools take it as an option.
-  echo "$command_line_filename" | $EGREP '^(/|[A-z]:/)' &gt;&6 \
+  echo "$command_line_filename" | $EGREP '^(/|[A-Za-z]:/)' &gt;&6 \
   || command_line_filename="./$command_line_filename"

   # See if the file exists.  If it doesn't we're in trouble since, even

I suggest that you submit a bug report giving the pointer to the link you quoted in your first post.

openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE

kullmann · August 22, 2011, 9:02pm

Okay, the version 1.164 of texi2dvi provided at Index of /gnu/texinfo works,
and gcc can be build now (including documentation).
Have submitted a bug report.

Thanks

Oliver