nano - packaged and ready for some criticism :)

[Charles Wilson]

Christopher Faylor wrote:

>>>3) I'd suggest ( cd /usr/info ; for i in nano.info ; do install-info
>>>$i --dir-file=dir ; done ) instead of installing _every_ info file in
>>>the directory, as that could get quite slow :].
>>>
>>
>>I'll take the blame for this.  Two of my recent packages (the experimental 
>>versions of autoconf and automake wrapper scripts) had postinstall scripts 
>>that installed *every* info file.  This was a thinko on my part, but it 
>>seems to have spread...
>>
> 
> Is it really that slow to do this?  You actually end up with some benefit
> since the dir file could be fixed "automatically" if it was screwed up
> before.


It can be.  It takes about 7-8 seconds to do it on my PIII-450/W2K machine. 
  If *every* package -- or even a significant minority -- did this, 
installing would become tedious very quickly.

Let's put on our newbie caps: Q: "info is broken, but /usr/info is full of 
files.  Whatever shall I do?"  A: "reinstall info package"

--> The info package should have this script -- either in /usr/bin/fix-info 
or /etc/postinstall/info.sh (or both).

But no other package should (THEY should all contain postinstall scripts to 
explictly install only their own info files)

As Chris points out, this is about graceful recovery from 
packaging/maintainer screwups.  Say I accidentally release an ncurses 
package with a /usr/info/dir.  Blammo -- everybody's dir file is screwed 
up.  How to fix?  Right now, I must manually do this:

for fn in /usr/info/*.info ; do install-info --dir-file=/usr/info/dir 
--info-file=$fn ; done

*Well* beyond the newbie's capability.  But "reinstall the info package" or 
"run fix-info" is nice and simple.

--Chuck