Subject: HEADS-UP: info-file handling changes
To: None <>
From: Johnny C. Lam <>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 03/05/2006 17:35:11
I'm cleaning up the info-file handling in pkgsrc.  In particular, the
PLIST module is going to transform "info/" automatically into
"${INFO_DIR}/", much like how it's currently done for man
pages.  However, this assumes that INFO_DIR is something set by the
user, not by the package.  When it was originally proposed, my
recollection of it is that INFO_DIR is something that should be set
by the user to represent the default location under ${PREFIX} for the
info files.  However, I see the following packages Makefiles set
INFO_DIR explicitly:


I will be making the following two changes:

(1) Create a new variable PKGINFODIR which is only settable by the
    user and which represents the subdirectory where info files are
    located under the main directory tree where the package is installed.
    It defaults to "info".

For example, if PKGINFODIR is set to "share/info", then info files
would be found in /usr/pkg/share/info, /usr/pkg/gdbada/share/info,
etc.  PKGINFODIR would replace INFO_DIR, which seems to be used by at
least one of those package Makefiles named earlier just because it's
a convenient name.

(2) Drop INFO_FILES from package Makefiles and directly list info file
    entries in the PLISTs.

The PLIST module already handles split info files correctly -- the
only info file entries in the PLISTs would be the name of the main
info files.  The PLIST module would then automatically determine which
files are info files based on their paths.

I will be making these changes before the 2006Q1 branch.  I'll be posting
patches for these changes in the next day or so.


	-- Johnny Lam <>