So you don't think it could be a texinfo bug? Not finding the index is clearly something about the Emacs reader.
texinfo (here) fails to build info files from the source *.texi.
That's an independent problem. I can't say what happened. Nothing in
what you sent would prevent .info files from being created. And it is
certainly possible to do it, since they are in the cvs tarball, and I've
done it myself.
