Re: [gentoo-dev] sys-apps/texinfo vs @system

[Doug Goldstein <cardoe@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 12:59 AM, Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> the new texinfo-5.x series has rewritten makeinfo in perl.  the main `info`
> program is still in pure C.
>
> when it comes to packages installing .info pages, it's largely limited to the
> GNU projects as the format has never really caught on.  many of those projects
> also install man pages.
>
> personally, i've never found info pages usable.  for most utils, the man pages
> or the --help output is sufficient, and for people doing heavy development, the
> online html manuals are significantly more useful.

agreed.

>
> when it was pure C, i could live with it as it's only <1MiB and no real deps
> to speak of.  now it's more like 3MiB, and pulls in 3 semi-uncommon additional
> perl packages (not to mention perl itself).
>
> it's in @system for two reasons: it provides `info` and `makeinfo`.  the
> former is for reading info pages (i.e. RDEPEND) while the latter is used for
> generating info pages (i.e. DEPEND) when the tarball didn't ship with them
> pregenerated (they usually do).
>
> one option would be to make the makeinfo stuff into a USE flag so all the perl
> junk isn't pulled in by default.  only the packages that actually generate
> info pages can DEPEND on that.
>
> it'd be simpler if we just dropped it altogether from @system.  if people want
> `info`, they can `emerge` it themselves.  if packages want `makeinfo`, they
> can DEPEND on it -- few fall into this category (<100 by a rough survey of
> random Gentoo installs).
>
> obviously my preference is for the latter.
> -mike

I agree with the later as well.

-- 
Doug Goldstein