Re: Bug#793067: Bug#792328: info: can no longer find the Emacs manual

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2015 23:32:08 +0100
> From: Gavin Smith <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, Texinfo <address@hidden>,
>       Rob Browning <address@hidden>
> 
> If you don't care about being able to access renamed files via
> cross-references, then the renaming of files to include versions is
> good enough. If INFOPATH is the string "PATH", then the Info file
> search path is deduced from the value of the PATH environmental
> variable, so "info foo" should match the documentation for running
> "foo".

Assuming you are alluding to what's currently in the code, this is
only true for directories on PATH that have their own share/info
subdirectories.  Your text above could be interpreted to mean "info
foo" will load foo-1.2.3.info when there's /usr/bin/foo-1.2.3
executable file found on PATH, but I don't see in the code anything
that would make that happen.

> Then there would only be one "foo.info" manual reachable for
> each element in PATH (those other than the first can be accessed with
> "info --all foo"). This means that "info foo" can only give the manual
> for a particular version of foo if there is an executable called "foo"
> somewhere in the PATH (assuming a sensible setup). Otherwise you'd
> have to do "info foo-12.34" instead. This relegates that manual to a
> second-class status, but that isn't too bad, because the corresponding
> executable is also second-class when it comes to the shell finding it.

This would make many "second-class" manuals, because there are
actually many manuals that don't correspond to any executable.  To
name just a few, there are no executables named 'texinfo' or 'elisp'
or 'coreutils' or 'gccint'.  So adopting this path will just confuse
users, because "info emacs" will magically work, while "info elisp"
won't.