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

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

[Mike Frysinger]

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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.

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

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

[Duncan]

Mike Frysinger posted on Sun, 31 Mar 2013 01:59:52 -0400 as excerpted:

> it'd be simpler if we just dropped [texinfo] 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).

Except... at least for those running build-systems, some of those <100 
pkgs with hard deps on texinfo include automake, autoconf, gcc, and 
e2fsprogs, all of which are pretty core to a gentoo system, at least one 
that builds anything.

Texinfo may be more practical to remove on binpkg-only systems, tho, 
which might be what you had in mind, but if there was hint of that I 
didn't catch it.

Or maybe your intent was to either kill these deps or put them behind 
USE=doc as well?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Sun, 31 Mar 2013, Duncan  wrote:

> Or maybe your intent was to either kill these deps or put them
> behind USE=doc as well?

USE=doc doesn't look right for this, as it's normally used for large
sized documentation. Something like USE=info might be better.

Ulrich

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

[Michael Mol]

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On 03/31/2013 06:19 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Sun, 31 Mar 2013, Duncan  wrote:
> 
>> Or maybe your intent was to either kill these deps or put them
>> behind USE=doc as well?
> 
> USE=doc doesn't look right for this, as it's normally used for large
> sized documentation. Something like USE=info might be better.
> 
> Ulrich
> 

I would second USE=info. I use info pages not infrequently, and it's
irritating when I'm on an unfamiliar system or distro, discover manpages
are present (but info pages aren't), and can't find the easy path
forward to get them installed.

USE=info would be superb, in that sense. USE=doc would be fine, too, IMHO.


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

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Sunday 31 March 2013 05:19:58 Duncan wrote:
> Mike Frysinger posted on Sun, 31 Mar 2013 01:59:52 -0400 as excerpted:
> > it'd be simpler if we just dropped [texinfo] 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).
> 
> Except... at least for those running build-systems, some of those <100
> pkgs with hard deps on texinfo include automake, autoconf, gcc, and
> e2fsprogs, all of which are pretty core to a gentoo system, at least one
> that builds anything.

any core package that includes info pages should not be regenerating them 
hence should not need texinfo.  i've applied a fix already for gcc to do just 
that.

we've already dropped autoconf/automake from @system since the autotools 
eclass handles that for us.

other packages might need more work along the same way.

> Texinfo may be more practical to remove on binpkg-only systems, tho,
> which might be what you had in mind, but if there was hint of that I
> didn't catch it.

binpkg or custom ROOTs.  both are important to me.
-mike

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

[Anthony G. Basile]

On 03/31/2013 01:59 AM, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> personally, i've never found info pages usable.

ditto.

>
> 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 also prefer just dropping it altogether.  same reasons.  i suspect it 
can also be removed from catalyst stage 2 which would clean up those runs.

-- 
Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Gentoo Linux Developer [Hardened]
E-Mail    : blueness@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP  : 1FED FAD9 D82C 52A5 3BAB  DC79 9384 FA6E F52D 4BBA
GnuPG ID  : F52D4BBA

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

[Doug Goldstein]

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

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

[Diego Elio Pettenò]

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On 31/03/2013 07:59, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> 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).

As long as we keep installing info pages by default (and poke upstream
with a clue-by-four if they do not distribute them in the first place),
I'm happy to have it nuked from @system.

-- 
Diego Elio Pettenò — Flameeyes
flameeyes@flameeyes.eu — http://blog.flameeyes.eu/


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

[Michael Palimaka]

On 31/03/2013 16:59, Mike Frysinger wrote:
>
> 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
>
Removing it from @system sounds good. I have no preference as to how 
that is handled as long as the info pages are still available to those 
that want them.

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

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Sunday 31 March 2013 01:59:52 Mike Frysinger wrote:
> 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).

people seem happy with this, so i'll have the release team do a test build and 
see how it goes.  there might be growing pains w/packages that lack a texinfo 
dep (or is accidental), but i don't expect this to impact too many packages 
(since the # generating info pages is small).

and to clarify, the status of the actual info pages being installed into 
/usr/share/info/ will be unchanged.  if you don't like those, you can always 
FEATURES=noinfo.
-mike

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 2:12 PM, Mike Frysinger <vapier@gentoo.org> wrote:
> people seem happy with this, so i'll have the release team do a test build and
> see how it goes.

++

If any of the system packages are going to pull in texinfo then it
really should have a use flag for the perl-requiring parts.  Otherwise
we're not accomplishing much.  As already suggested all packages
should still install info files, and those who greatly care can
install mask them.

If while they're at it they can have the latest i686 and amd64 builds
not be hardened or nomultilib builds that would also be wonderful
(this issue has been coming up here and there for a few months now and
drives my automated scripts nuts).  :)

http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/releases/amd64/autobuilds/latest-stage3-amd64.txt
http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/gentoo/releases/x86/autobuilds/latest-stage3-i686.txt

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443472
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=463644

Rich