Would it make sense only to include this file if a _TEXINFOS variable e.g. info_TEXINFOS is set in Makefile.am?
It sounds sensible, although I admit trying to discern whether any _TEXINFOS var is set anywhere in the source tree is something I've never looked into. So it's nothing I'm going to be implementing in the foreseeable future. I can also imagine unlikely scenarios where one would want texinfo.tex even without a Texinfo manual. Thus having an option to explicitly texinfo.tex (or any other autodist file), as Werner suggested, sounds like a better approach to me. By the way, another possibility would be to change automake --add-missing: allow a secondary option to specify files not to be copied that otherwise would be. Personally I find --add-missing awfully mysterious, anyway. Copy some arbitrary set of files from some unknown set of places, possibly (or not) overwriting what's present in the source? No thanks. And there is no --dry-run option so it's possible to know what will be done. A patch to improve that situation would be welcome. --thanks, karl.