Re: info: INFOPATH interpretation severely flawed

[Bruno Haible]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> The situation I have in mind is this:
> 
>  . you have a program FOO in /usr/local/bin
> 
>  . you have a manual for that program in /usr/local/share/info
> 
>  . you also have an old manual for a previous version of FOO in
>    /opt/gnu/share/info, but no corresponding binary in /opt/gnu/bin
> 
> Now typing "FOO" at the shell prompt will invoke /usr/local/bin/FOO,
> but typing "info FOO" will display /opt/gnu/share/info/FOO.info
> (assuming PATH and INFOPATH are set as you show a few messages back in
> this thread).

This situation cannot occur if the user has only used "make install"
to install varsions of FOO, or if the user has installed the packages
'FOO' and 'FOO-info' from a distro. It can only occur if the user has
  - either used "make install-info" without "make install",
  - or installed a package 'FOO-info' without installing 'FOO',
  - or otherwise fiddled with the installed package FOO.

This situation is therefore not the main one, and can only occur after
a more or less stupid action from the user.

IMO the main use-case, that deserves more attention, is the one where
users install complete packages ("make install"). [1][2]

Bruno

[1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2012-05/msg00004.html
[2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2012-05/msg00007.html