Texinfo Perl module versions (was: info: can no longer find the Emacs manual)

[Gavin Smith]

On 3 August 2015 at 14:22, Gavin Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> Suppose you configure with "./configure --program-suffix=-5.2" and
> there is an installable Info file "texinfo.info": ideally, the file
> would be installed as "texinfo-5.2.info", and be accessible with "info
> texinfo-5.2". Moreover, there should be some transformation of the dir
> entry from this:
>
> * texindex: (texinfo)Format with tex/texindex.  Sort Texinfo index files.
>
> to this:
>
> * texindex-5.2: (texinfo-5.2)Format with tex/texindex.  Sort Texinfo
> index files.
>
> which would be achieved with an extra option to install-info. (Then
> "info texindex-5.2" would work.)
>
> Perhaps install-info could also add a symlink from texinfo.info to
> texinfo-5.2.info if no file texinfo.info exists already.

Even if that happened, installing multiple versions of Texinfo under
the same prefix hierarchy breaks. I discovered this after I did
"./configure --program-suffix=-6.0" and installed Texinfo 6.0, but
when I ran "makeinfo" referring to an installed development version,
it broke because it was using the installed Perl modules from 6.0
instead of the development-version Perl modules. The way to fix this
would be to install the Perl modules under a versioned directory, for
example "/usr/local/share/texinfo/6.0".