makeinfo (GNU texinfo) 4.7 problem when formatting tar 1.14 manual

[Paul Eggert]

I'm CC'ing this to bug-tar but it appears to me to be a texinfo issue really.

Here's how I reproduced the problem with texinfo 4.7:

   wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.14.tar.gz
   gunzip <tar-1.14.tar.gz | tar xf -
   cd tar-1.14/doc
   makeinfo --no-split -DDISTRIB -I. tar.texi -o tar.info

Here is makeinfo's first diagnostic:

   tar.texi:1713: warning: `.' or `,' must follow @xref, not `}'.

(There are other diagnostics, but they're similar.)

Here is line 1713 of tar.texi:

   @command{tar} from the root directory; @value{xref-absolute-names}.  (Note

xref-absolute-names is defined as follows on line 109 of tar.texi:

   @set xref-absolute-names @xref{absolute}

It appears that "makeinfo" is getting confused while expanding
@value{xref-absolute-nammes} to @xref{absolute}.