bogus "Negative repeat count does nothing" warnings on Autoconf manual

[Paul Eggert]

I ran into this problem when building the Autoconf manual using Texinfo 6.3 on 
Fedora 24, which has Perl 5.22.2. With the attached file (which is a 
stripped-down version of the manual), the command 'makeinfo autoconf.texi' 
complains:


  Negative repeat count does nothing at 
/home/eggert/opt/Linux-x86_64/texinfo-6.3/share/texinfo/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm 
line 1038.
  Negative repeat count does nothing at 
/home/eggert/opt/Linux-x86_64/texinfo-6.3/share/texinfo/Texinfo/Convert/Plaintext.pm 
line 1039.


These complaints seem to be bogus. I expect this some sort of Perl compatibility 
issue.


PS. I suggest adding this as a test case for Texinfo, as it would be amusing to 
test Texinfo with Chaos
\input texinfo @c -*-texinfo-*-
@setfilename autoconf.info

@node Top

@flushright
A physicist, an engineer, and a computer scientist were discussing the
nature of God.  ``Surely a Physicist,'' said the physicist, ``because
early in the Creation, God made Light; and you know, Maxwell's
equations, the dual nature of electromagnetic waves, the relativistic
consequences@enddots{}'' ``An Engineer!,'' said the engineer, ``because
before making Light, God split the Chaos into Land and Water; it takes a
hell of an engineer to handle that big amount of mud, and orderly
separation of solids from liquids@enddots{}'' The computer scientist
shouted: ``And the Chaos, where do you think it was coming from, hmm?''

---Anonymous
@end flushright

@bye

Re: [bug-gawk] 'make -C doc/ pdf' [Makefile:457: recipe for target gawk.pdf failed]

[arnold]

"David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]"  wrote:

> I guess I didn't make myself clear. By default the vanilla source code is
> used during build inside mock, no modifications to it are currently there.
> So, when I try the build for 4.1.4, it uses the texinfo.tex shipped with
> gawk. There shouldn't be any way for mock to download some older
> texinfo.tex from somewhere else. The reason why it is older in the gawk.log
> is that I was trying to find out which commit started to cause this. I have
> found it, and I have put that log to pastebin. That's why it has older
> timestamp than current source tarball. :)

I see now.

> I'm actually starting to think that something has changed inside Texinfo
> 
>
> I will look into this more tomorrow, and I will discuss this with our
> maintainer of Texinfo.

Great. Sounds like the right way to go.

> > I don't have the cycles to try to mess with SRPMs and so on, especially
> > as I don't run an RPM-based distribution.
> >
> No problem, I understand. :) I will try to find some fix/workaround, I
> will keep you updated if needed.

Thanks for understanding. I appreciate the effort and am glad that
4.1.4 will get into Fedora soon.

Thanks,

Arnold

Re: [bug-gawk] 'make -C doc/ pdf' [Makefile:457: recipe for target gawk.pdf failed]

[David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 4:22 PM,  wrote:

> Hi David.
>
> You need to figure out how to get mock to use the texinfo.tex shipped
> with gawk. Mock is stil using an older version. I support building the doc
> with what I ship.  But not otherwise.


​I guess I didn't make myself clear. By default the vanilla source code is
used during build inside mock, no modifications to it are currently there.​
So, when I try the build for 4.1.4, it uses the texinfo.tex shipped with
gawk. There shouldn't be any way for mock to download some older
texinfo.tex from somewhere else. The reason why it is older in the gawk.log
is that I was trying to find out which commit started to cause this. I have
found it, and I have put that log to pastebin. That's why it has older
timestamp than current source tarball. :)


> It may be that you need to move to Texinfo 6.1 (or even the just released
> Texinfo 6.3) for the latest Fedora. I don't know.  Using the texinfo.tex
> in the tarball is the way to go. You may need to move to the newer
> Texinfo anyway since that package has an updated and smarter texindex
> program which gawk's doc probably needs.
>
​Actually, we're using the Texinfo 6.1 for Fedora 24: (mock used this)
texinfox86_64
6.1-3.fc25  fedora   1.1 M
texinfo-texx86_64
6.1-3.fc25  fedora   153 k

We're using older version (Texinfo 6.0) inside F23, which is able to
compile the gawk-4.1.4 documentation.

I'm actually starting to think that something has changed inside Texinfo
between version 6.0 and 6.1, because there was this BZ for Texinfo:
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1309702

texi2dvi was exiting with wrong exit code, and doing only one
iteration/pass. This looks almost like something I'm getting inside mock.
The problem was reported to Texinfo upstream:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2016-02/msg00121.html

I will look into this more tomorrow, and I will discuss this with our
maintainer of Texinfo.


> I don't have the cycles to try to mess with SRPMs and so on, especially
> as I don't run an RPM-based distribution.
>
​No problem, I understand. :) I will try to find some fix/workaround, I
will keep you updated if needed.​

David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]
*Associate Software Engineer*
*Brno, Czech Republic*

RED HAT | TRIED. TESTED. TRUSTED.
Every airline in the Fortune 500 relies on Red Hat.
Find out why at Trusted | Red Hat .​

Re: [bug-gawk] 'make -C doc/ pdf' [Makefile:457: recipe for target gawk.pdf failed]

[arnold]

Hi David.

You need to figure out how to get mock to use the texinfo.tex shipped
with gawk. Mock is stil using an older version. I support building the doc
with what I ship.  But not otherwise.

It may be that you need to move to Texinfo 6.1 (or even the just released
Texinfo 6.3) for the latest Fedora. I don't know.  Using the texinfo.tex
in the tarball is the way to go. You may need to move to the newer
Texinfo anyway since that package has an updated and smarter texindex
program which gawk's doc probably needs.

Inisde mock, you can try setting the TEXINPUTS environment variable to
have the gawk doc directory in it first:

TEXINPUTS=$PWD/doc:$TEXINPUTS make -C doc/ pdf

or some such.

I don't have the cycles to try to mess with SRPMs and so on, especially
as I don't run an RPM-based distribution.

HTH,

Arnold


"David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]"  wrote:

> Hello guys,
>
> I was in a hurry yesterday, so I have accidentally sent the wrong log
> file... :-/ Today, I looked into this more:
>
> * I am able to create documentation if I normally use 'make -C doc/ pdf' or
> 'cd doc && make pdf && cd ..' for gawk-4.1.4 in my Fedora 24.
> * The problem occurs when I try to build it inside mock [1] for Fedora 24
> (and higher), I'm trying to do rebase for F26.
> * If I try to build it for F23 in mock, it passes. IOW, using newer
> versions of 'texi2dvi' inside mock (for F24+) results in compilation fail.
> * When it fails, it produces only partial documentation, with Index and
> everything behind it missing.
> * When I use the 'texi2pdf' instead of 'make pdf' in the specfile, I'm able
> to see at which line this occurs.
> * I've used git-bisect to find a commit where the build starts to fail,
> it's this commit:
>
> [upstream||gawk] ~ [3e762b6 $] # git last
> * commit 3e762b6f62061974d152dd251f3e83cacca073e3 (HEAD, refs/bisect/bad)
> | Author: Arnold D. Robbins 
> | Date:   12 months ago
> |
> | Update infrastructure files.
>
> * This helped me narrow it to file causing the issue: doc/texinfo.tex
> (using older version of texinfo.tex with the first failing commit allows
> build to pass).
> * Reading through changes in the texinfo.tex, there was some bigger update
> to how Index is being produced, if I'm not mistaken.
> * Running the build with refs/bisect/bad commit and with 'texi2pdf' shows
> me, that the compilation of PDF stops at line number 38144 of gawk.texi
> (which has @cindex right above it).
>
> So, I have updated the pastebin log, so you can check it out yourself here:
> http://pastebin.com/skxGpHnL
>
> Unfortunately, I'm not so good with TeX to be able to pinpoint the problem
> more closely, but if you need anything more from me, I can help. :) I can
> also provide you with the srpm if you would like to build it / try it
> yourself.
>
> -
> [1] https://github.com/rpm-software-management/mock/wiki
> -
>
> Best regards,
>
> David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]
> *Associate Software Engineer*
> *Brno, Czech Republic*
>
> RED HAT | TRIED. TESTED. TRUSTED.
> Every airline in the Fortune 500 relies on Red Hat.
> Find out why at Trusted | Red Hat .

Re: [bug-gawk] 'make -C doc/ pdf' [Makefile:457: recipe for target gawk.pdf failed]

[David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]]

Hello guys,

I was in a hurry yesterday, so I have accidentally sent the wrong log
file... :-/ Today, I looked into this more:

* I am able to create documentation if I normally use 'make -C doc/ pdf' or
'cd doc && make pdf && cd ..' for gawk-4.1.4 in my Fedora 24.
* The problem occurs when I try to build it inside mock [1] for Fedora 24
(and higher), I'm trying to do rebase for F26.
* If I try to build it for F23 in mock, it passes. IOW, using newer
versions of 'texi2dvi' inside mock (for F24+) results in compilation fail.
* When it fails, it produces only partial documentation, with Index and
everything behind it missing.
* When I use the 'texi2pdf' instead of 'make pdf' in the specfile, I'm able
to see at which line this occurs.
* I've used git-bisect to find a commit where the build starts to fail,
it's this commit:

[upstream||gawk] ~ [3e762b6 $] # git last
* commit 3e762b6f62061974d152dd251f3e83cacca073e3 (HEAD, refs/bisect/bad)
| Author: Arnold D. Robbins 
| Date:   12 months ago
|
| Update infrastructure files.

* This helped me narrow it to file causing the issue: doc/texinfo.tex
(using older version of texinfo.tex with the first failing commit allows
build to pass).
* Reading through changes in the texinfo.tex, there was some bigger update
to how Index is being produced, if I'm not mistaken.
* Running the build with refs/bisect/bad commit and with 'texi2pdf' shows
me, that the compilation of PDF stops at line number 38144 of gawk.texi
(which has @cindex right above it).

So, I have updated the pastebin log, so you can check it out yourself here:
http://pastebin.com/skxGpHnL

Unfortunately, I'm not so good with TeX to be able to pinpoint the problem
more closely, but if you need anything more from me, I can help. :) I can
also provide you with the srpm if you would like to build it / try it
yourself.

-
[1] https://github.com/rpm-software-management/mock/wiki
-

Best regards,

David Kaspar [Dee'Kej]
*Associate Software Engineer*
*Brno, Czech Republic*

RED HAT | TRIED. TESTED. TRUSTED.
Every airline in the Fortune 500 relies on Red Hat.
Find out why at Trusted | Red Hat .