Re: texi2dvi --output and --clean

[Akim Demaille]

Le 8 janv. 2012 à 01:53, Karl Berry a écrit :

> Hi Akim,

Hi Karl!  Happy new year!

> It used to be that  texi2dvi --output someoutfile  implied passing
> --clean.

Really?  Ok, I don't remember.

>  That was eliminated at some point in (I'm assuming) your
> massive rewrites.  Right now, if the call is
>  texi2dvi --output some.out foo.tex
> the output remains in foo.dvi and is not moved to some.out.

Ouch.  It refuses output names that don't match *.dvi?  Hum…

> The comment at --output now reads:
>    -o | --out  | --output)
>      shift
>      # Make it absolute, just in case we also have --clean, or whatever.
>      oname=`absolute "$1"`;;
> 
> which seems that it was intentional to no longer imply --clean.
> But why?  Do you have any recollection?

I don't remember, yet I find this normal: changing the output name
does not seem to be correlated to where the build is done.

>  Or maybe I am reading too much
> into that comment.  The --help string was never changed, and has always
> said "implies --clean".

OK, I really don't remember.

> It is easy enough to restore implying clean (if tidy has not been
> specified, I suppose).  It is also feasible, I think, to make --output
> work in --build=local mode, e.g., my initial attempt at a patch below.

That's what I would vote for.

> If you have any insight, that would be great.  Otherwise, I guess I'll
> go back to implying --clean.
> 
> Also ... do you still use texi2dvi for processing latex documents in all
> those fancy ways?  Hevea, tex4ht, etc.?  Just wondering.

Yes, I do.  Actually, I should really spend some time on texi2dvi to port
some of the changes I use, and to import others you have installed.  Just
for the records, here's the texi2dvi I use currently.

I'll checkout Texinfo and submit changes.  Do we have a test suite?  ISTR
that at some point it had to be disabled.

Cheers!

texi2dvi
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