bug with texinfo, building gcc-3.0.4 on sparc-solaris2.7

[Jeff Deifik]

texinfo --version
TeX (Web2C 7.2) 3.14159
kpathsea version 3.2
Copyright (C) 1998 D.E. Knuth.
There is NO warranty.  You may redistribute this software
under the terms of the GNU General Public License
and the TeX copyright.
For more information about these matters, see the files
named COPYING and the TeX source.
Primary author of TeX: D.E. Knuth.

texi2dvi --version
texi2dvi (GNU Texinfo 4.2) 0.51


hardware is a sparc, solaris 2.7, compiler is gcc3.0.4

When I did a 'make dvi' on the virgin gcc-3.0.4 source, there were a bunch
of errors relating to gol :

texi2dvi -I ../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc -I ../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc/include 
../../gc\
c-3.0.4/gcc/doc/gcc.texi^M
/home/jdeifik/work/gnu/gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc/invoke.texi:159: Unknown command 
`gol'\

I have been getting help from Joseph S. Myers address@hidden
and he said:

> 
TEXINPUTS=.:/home/jdeifik/work/gnu/jeff-native-gcc/gcc:/home/jdeifik/work/gnu/gc 

> c-3.0.4/gcc/doc::../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc:../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc/include:
> 
INDEXSTYLE=.:/home/jdeifik/work/gnu/jeff-native-gcc/gcc:/home/jdeifik/work/gnu/g 

> cc-3.0.4/gcc/doc::../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc:../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc/include:
> + test -n
> + sed 1q ./../../gcc-3.0.4/gcc/doc/gcc.texi
> + fgrep input texinfo
> language=texinfo
> bibtex=
> texindex=texindex
> + test dvi = dvi
> tex=tex
> + test = t
> txiversion_tex=txiversion.tex
> + echo \input texinfo.tex @bye
> + cd /tmp/t2d5992
> + sed -n s/^.*\[\(.*\)version \(....\)-\(..\)-\(..\).*$/txiformat=\1
> txiversion=
> "\2\3\4"/p
> + tex txiversion.tex
> + eval
> + false texinfo.tex preloaded as `', version is `' ...
> + test 19990129 -le
OK, the problem appears to be that the test for texinfo.tex being recent
enough for macro expansion is done in a temporary directory, but the
TEXINPUTS setting (from the -I arguments) pointing to the right
texinfo.tex to use still includes relative paths. Report this to the
Texinfo maintainers as a Texinfo bug. As a workaround, install a
sufficiently recent (at least 19990129) texinfo.tex version in a directory
TeX searches by default, or set TEXINPUTS to point to such a directory
before running texi2dvi; if macro support is detected, the right version
of texinfo.tex (that included with GCC) will then be used for the actual
formatting.

(I tried unsuccessfully to set the TEXINPUTS variable, but I got past
this bug by copying a copy of texinfo.tex to my bin directory,
/home/jdeifik/bin . This seems to indicate that Joseph was right, in that
texinfo is doing a relative path thing, incorrectly).

        thanks,
        jeff deifik,
        address@hidden