[manuals] Manuals failing to build on Ubuntu LTS 14.04

[Andre Vieira]

Hi Jon,

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.
>>
>> @*->@unskip
>>
>>               @hfil @break @hbox {}@ignorespaces
>>
>> For stdio/sscanf.def:275, stdio/swscanf.def:263 and time/strftime.def:213.
>>
>> These are all occurrences of an '@end table' (or o- in the original
>> c-file) followed by some white lines and:
>>    @*
>>    @strong{Returns}@*
>>
>> (these correspond to a newline and RETURNS, in the original c-file).
>>
>> This code has been around for a while, so it might have to do with a
>> change in pdfTex?
>
> While this doesn't look related, I am a bit concerned that I might have
> broken this with my recent documentation-related changes.  Can you check
> if this problem still occurs with an older version of newlib (e.g.
> commit 06105fa9 or earlier)
I tried building commit d04fd9d5f7d6989cc3ca99e7d49dafc098f27e51 on 
Ubunut 14.04 LTS, which is a commit earlier than the one you mentioned, 
though I still get the same error.
>
> I agree this is likely to be a regression in pdftex.  I assume you were
> able to build the documentation on some other distro with some other
> version of pdftex? Can you give details of that?
>
I have been able to build the manuals on Ubuntu 8.10 with:

$pdfetex --version
pdfTeX using libpoppler 3.141592-1.40.3-2.2 (Web2C 7.5.6)
kpathsea version 3.5.6
Copyright 2007 Peter Breitenlohner (eTeX)/Han The Thanh (pdfTeX).
Kpathsea is copyright 2007 Karl Berry and Olaf Weber.
There is NO warranty.  Redistribution of this software is
covered by the terms of both the pdfTeX using libpoppler copyright and
the Lesser GNU General Public License.
For more information about these matters, see the file
named COPYING and the pdfTeX using libpoppler source.
Primary author of pdfTeX using libpoppler: Peter Breitenlohner
(eTeX)/Han The Thanh (pdfTeX).
Kpathsea written by Karl Berry, Olaf Weber, and others.

Compiled with libpng 1.2.27; using libpng 1.2.27
Compiled with zlib 1.2.3.3; using zlib 1.2.3.3
Compiled with libpoppler version 3.00



I hope that helps.

BR,