[R-sig-Fedora] WARNING you cannot build info or html versions of the R manuals

[Rolf Turner]

On 17/01/16 11:03, Tom Callaway wrote:
> Are you building from a source tarball or using the Fedora SRPM? I
> strongly advise you to rebuild the SRPM, because the resulting binary
> RPM will have all the necessary deps for building and installing. You
> might need to change the spec up a bit, since I assume building on
> Fedora means a modern system, and f17.... isn't modern.

Indeed it is not modern!

I build from the source tarball.  I don't know about/have never heard of 
"SRPM".

(a) How *does* one build from the Fedora SRPM?

(b) How does one "change the spec up a bit"?  How does one find the 
"spec" to change it?  Does one need to be a Fedora guru in order to be 
able to change the spec without bringing the universe to an end?  (I am 
*not*, sad to say, a Fedora guru.)

(c) All that being said, the question remains as to *why* R cannot find 
"texinfo" when it is indeed present on my system.

I do not wish to run the risk of rendering my system unusable, by making 
changes that are beyond my comprehension, because of the annoying but 
minor (and essentially harmless) warning.  I really just want to 
understand a bit about why the warning eventuates at all, when it 
appears to me that my system has everything that it needs to "build info 
and html versions" of the manuals.

cheers,

Rolf

> On Jan 16, 2016 4:48 PM, Rolf Turner <r.turner at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>>
>>
>> My apologies for an inadvertent cross-posting.  I *intended* to send
>> this message to r-sig-fedora but by mistake sent it to
>> users at lists.fedoraproject.org  .
>> So I am re-sending it to the address that I actually intended.
>>
>> Again, I apologise for the screw-up.
>>
>> So.  Here we go again:
>>
>> It's no big deal, but when I build R from source (as I must) I always
>> get the warning given in the subject line of this post.
>>
>> I have searched the web a bit and have found a number of references to
>> this warning.  Universally the proffered solution is "install texinfo".
>>
>> So I did (just now)
>>
>>       sudo yum install texinfo
>>
>> and was told:
>>
>>> Package texinfo-4.13a-16.fc17.x86_64 already installed and latest version
>>> Nothing to do
>>
>> I checked with "whereis texinfo" and got:
>>
>>> texinfo: /usr/share/texinfo /usr/share/man/man5/texinfo.5.gz
>>
>>
>> So it's there on my system --- but perhaps not where R can find it???
>>
>> Can anyone suggest to me what I need to do to get R and texinfo to
>> cooperate?
>>
>> Please note that I am running Fedora 17.  Yes, I know, it's
>> antediluvian.  But for reasons I do not wish to discuss, I'm stuck
>> there.  (This is one of the reasons why I must build R from source.
>> It all works fine, except for that warning.)

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