Re: texi2dvi bug in texinfo-4.2

[Karl Berry]

(Replying to mail from almost a year ago ..., probably irrelevant now,
but FWIW ...)

    The $txincludes variable is either empty or begins with a path
    separator (":").

BTW, I think you mean `ends' with a path separator.  The code says:
      txincludes="$txincludes$1$path_sep"
That looks to me like it'll start with the directory name.

Anyway, as for the real problem, if TEXINPUTS starts with :, then that
means to search the default directories at this point.  (It still does
mean that, and this is a feature I programmed in kpathsea years ago :).
So, the resulting doubled :: (which also means search the default
directories) is correct, retaining the original semantics.

If you don't want to search the default directories at that point, then
TEXINPUTS should not start with :.  Have it end with a : instead.  Then
you can put a local directory at its beginning and it will take effect.

Or so it seems to me.  Let me know if I'm missing something here.

I'll mention this feature of TeX path searching in the manual.

Thanks,
karl



Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2002 18:32:23 -0800
From: Bob Wilson <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: texi2dvi bug in texinfo-4.2

This patch fixes a minor bug in texi2dvi.  The $txincludes variable is
either empty or begins with a path separator (":").  If $txincludes begins
with a separator, then TEXINPUTS is set to a string containing two path
separators in a row, which TeX apparently interprets to mean something like
"search the default TeX directories".  (My copy of TeX may be old -- Version
3.14159 (C version 6.1) -- but it seems like texi2dvi shouldn't put two
separators in a row even if newer versions of TeX do something different.)
The effect of this bug is that I cannot set TEXINPUTS to override a file
(e.g., texinfo.tex) that exists in the default TeX directories.

Please consider adding this fix into the next texinfo release. Thanks!

--Bob

*** texinfo-4.2/util/texi2dvi   Fri Apr  5 18:06:57 2002
--- util/texi2dvi       Fri Apr  5 18:07:31 2002
***************
*** 352,358 ****
    # etc. files in ${directory} don't get used in preference to fresher
    # files in `.'.  Include orig_pwd in case we are in clean mode, where
    # we've cd'd to a temp directory.
!   
common=".$path_sep$orig_pwd$path_sep$filename_dir$path_sep$txincludes$path_sep"
     TEXINPUTS="$common$TEXINPUTS_orig"
    INDEXSTYLE="$common$INDEXSTYLE_orig"
  
--- 352,358 ----
    # etc. files in ${directory} don't get used in preference to fresher
    # files in `.'.  Include orig_pwd in case we are in clean mode, where
    # we've cd'd to a temp directory.
!   common=".$path_sep$orig_pwd$path_sep$filename_dir$txincludes$path_sep"
     TEXINPUTS="$common$TEXINPUTS_orig"
    INDEXSTYLE="$common$INDEXSTYLE_orig"