Dependences of textinfo

[Clemens Lang]

Hi,

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 05:58:09AM -0700, Marcus Calhoun-Lopez wrote:
> Most ports that use texinfo probably require only a subset of these
> external programs. Whose job is it to provide these dependencies?
> 
> As far as I can tell, there are three options:
>     (1) texinfo has runtime dependencies on *all* of them just in case.
>     (2) A port, e.g. octave, has a build dependency on any extern programs it needs
>            (see https://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2016-January/040386.html <https://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2016-January/040386.html>).
>     (3) texinfo has runtime dependency on most common external programs (a mixture of (1) and (2)).
> 
> (2) seems to be what we have right now.
> Should we just stick with this (in which case #46105 should be closed)?

I'd also vote for (2).

> If (3) is the best choice, what are the most common external programs?

Here's my point against (3): To correctly install or remove GNU info
files, one needs to call install-info, and there's a PortGroup gnu_info
1.0 that does this. However, because ports doing this need install-info
they need to have a runtime dependency on the texinfo port. If texinfo
were to depend on latex, installing (for example) ddrescue would pull in
a TeX installation, which you also couldn't remove after installation,
because it's also needed on deactivation.

-- 
Clemens