Manuals failing to build on Ubuntu LTS 14.04

Manuals failing to build on Ubuntu LTS 14.04

On 11/08/2015 11:08, Andre Vieira wrote:
> On 10/08/15 14:38, Jon TURNEY wrote:
>> On 07/08/2015 11:13, Andre Vieira wrote:
>>> Building the manuals on Ubuntu LTS 14.04 (64-bit) using pdfTeX
>>> 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013/Debian) is failing with the
>>> following error:
>>> "Transcript written on libc.log.
>>> /usr/bin/texi2dvi: pdfetex exited with bad status, quitting."
>>>
>>> libc.log complaints about the following:
>>>
>>> You can't use `@unskip' in vertical mode.
>>>
[...]
>>>
>>> This code has been around for a while, so it might have to do with a
>>> change in pdfTex?

So it seems this problem has been around for a while, and looks like it
is due to a change in texi2dvi in texinfo 5.0 or late 4.x, see [1].

I guess it's not very noticeable since it only occurs when doing 'make
dvi', which doesn't happen by default.

Attached is a different and perhaps cleaner workaround to the one in
that thread.

[1] https://sourceware.org/ml/newlib/2013/msg00057.html

From 4d386b5900b6c68e022004b447faa696be5ff8c7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jon TURNEY <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 14:46:39 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Use '@sp 1' rather than '@*' to workaround a change in
 texi2dvi.

Since about TexInfo 5.0, using '@*' immediately after a table causes a 'You
can't use `@unskip' in vertical mode' error.

See https://sourceware.org/ml/newlib/2013/msg00057.html

Signed-off-by: Jon TURNEY <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>