Re: Brittleness with texinfo and version numbering

[Rik]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 12-Oct-2009, address@hidden wrote:
>
> | The current octave development version number is 3.3.50+.  The '+'
> | character is rather special in UNIX naming and in this case it is
> | breaking the macro @verbatiminclude which is used, for example, in oop.texi.
> | 
> | The actual problem is the value of abs_top_srcdir.  For Mercurial
> | archives this is whatever the user named the directory when cloning the
> | repository.  In my case I just used the name 'octave-dev' and my
> | Mercurial code compiles fine.  However, if one does 'make dist' the
> | resulting file includes the version (octave-3.3.50+.tar.gz) and this
> | code will extract to the directory octave-3.3.50+ and will not compile
> | the documentation.
> | 
> | Offhand I can think of two simple solutions.
> | 1) Stop using '+' or other special characters in version numbering
> | 2) Switch from absolute srcdir naming to relative path naming (../../
> | avoids any reference to octave-3.3.50+)
> | 
> | Which solution does the community prefer?
>
> I think this is a but in Texinfo.  If I create a directory called foo+
> and process the file
>
>   \input texinfo
>   @setfilename foo.info
>   @set srcdir foo+
>   @verbatiminclude @value{srcdir}/foo
>   @bye
>
> with tex, I see the following error:
>
>   $ tex foo.texi
>   This is TeX, Version 3.141592 (Web2C 7.5.6)
>   (./foo.texi (/usr/share/texmf/tex/texinfo/texinfo.tex
>   Loading texinfo [version 2008-04-18.10]: pdf, fonts, page headings, tables,
>   conditionals, indexing, sectioning, toc, environments, defuns, macros,
>   cross references, insertions,
>   (/usr/share/texmf-texlive/tex/generic/epsf/epsf.tex
>   This is `epsf.tex' v2.7.3 <23 July 2005>
>   ) localization, formatting, and turning on texinfo input format.) 
> (./foo.aux)
>   ! I can't find file `foo{'.
>   <to be read again> 
>                    @fam 
>   @tt ->@fam 
>            address@hidden @setfontstyle {tt}
>   +->address@hidden 
>         @char 43}
>   @value ... not address@hidden @csname address@hidden 
>                                                   @fi 
>   <argument> @value {srcdir}
>                           /foo
>   @doverbatiminclude ...ble @setupverbatim @input #1
>                                                    @afterenvbreak }
>   l.7 @verbatiminclude @value{srcdir}/foo
>
>   Please type another input file name: 
>
> If I comment out the "@setfilename foo.info" line it works.  Also,
> makeinfo can process this either way.
>
> Would you please report the problem to the Texinfo maintainers?
>   
I agree it's a problem with texinfo, but I think it will take a longer
to fix it this way than simply avoiding the problem.  If there's a hole
in the sidewalk I can call the city and it might be repaired 6 months
from now.  Or I could just walk down a different street.
 
There were already problems with this exact macro in 2008 when it
wouldn't accept the '@' character and David Bateman had to query and
track down a bug fix.  Not to be mean to the texinfo developers, but I
just don't have time to pursue that process.

--Rik