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

[Rolf Turner]

On 19/01/16 03:52, Tom Callaway wrote:
> On 01/16/2016 05:24 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
>> All that being said, the question remains as to *why* R cannot find
>> "texinfo" when it is indeed present on my system.
>
> Rather than give you a lengthy discussion of how RPM building works and
> hacking the R spec, let's focus on this question instead (I'm still
> willing to show you RPM building if you'd like, because if you're
> sticking with Fedora 17 indefinitely it will be useful to you...)
>
> The warning message string "you cannot build info or HTML versions of
> the R manuals" comes from m4/R.m4:
>
>    if test "${r_cv_prog_texi2any_v5}" != yes; then
>      warn_info="you cannot build info or HTML versions of the R manuals"
>      AC_MSG_WARN([${warn_info}])
>      MAKEINFO=""
>    else
>      MAKEINFO="${MAKEINFO}"
>    fi
>
> In that same file, if you look at the beginning of the m4 function, you
> see this comment:
>
>    ## Building the R Texinfo manuals requires texinfo v5.1 or later.
>    ## Set shell variable r_cv_prog_texi2any_v5 to 'yes' if a recent
>    ## enough Makeinfo is found, and to 'no' otherwise.
>
> Fedora 17 has texinfo 4.1, which is several years older than 5.1. You'll
> need to upgrade that to silence this error in R.
>
> You might try rebuilding the latest texinfo src RPM. We're at 6.0 in
> Fedora 23+:
>
> http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=676407
>
> Download the src RPM from that page, then, on your system, try:
>
>    rpmbuild --rebuild texinfo-6.0-2.fc24.src.rpm
>
> That should (hopefully) result in a texinfo RPM built for Fedora 17.
> Then you can install the new RPMS (they'll be in ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/$target
> where $target is probably x86_64):
>
>    rpm -Uvh info-6.0-2.fc17.*.rpm texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.*.rpm
>
> hth,
>
> ~tom

Okay; tried this.  The executive summary is:  It didn't work.

In more detail:  I got a sequence of warnings

warning: group mockbuild does not exist - using root

which I ignored.  Then got an error:

> error: Failed build dependencies:
> help2man is needed by texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.x86_64
> perl(Locale::Messages) is needed by texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.x86_64
> perl(Unicode::EastAsianWidth) is needed by texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.x86_64
> perl(Text::Unidecode) is needed by texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.x86_64

Did a sudo yum install help2man which seemed to work.  Then searched 
around to try to fathom the perl messages.  Found indications that I 
needed to install perl-libintl-1.20-13.fc21.src.rpm.

Got that rpm and did

rpmbuild --rebuild perl-libintl-1.20-13.fc21.src.rpm

going by analogy and hope.  Something seemed to happen.  Then did

cd ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64
sudo rpm -Uvh perl-libintl-1.20-13.fc17.x86_64.rpm
               perl-libintl-debuginfo-1.20-13.fc17.x86_64.rpm

(The forgoing two lines were actually a single line; I broke it for 
email formatting.)

Then tried

rpmbuild --rebuild texinfo-6.0-2.fc24.src.rpm

again.  Got the warnings again, of course, then the errors:

> error: Failed build dependencies:
> perl(Unicode::EastAsianWidth) is needed by texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.x86_64
> perl(Text::Unidecode) is needed by texinfo-6.0-2.fc17.x86_64


Found what seemed to be an appropriate rpm and did

rpmbuild --rebuild perl-Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.33-6.fc23.src.rpm

Got the errors

> error: Failed build dependencies:
> perl(Module::Package) is needed by perl-Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.33-6.fc17.noarch
> perl(Pod::Markdown) is needed by perl-Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.33-6.fc17.noarch
> perl(Module::Package::Au) is needed by perl-Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.33-6.fc17.noarch

Scrounged around with Google; found instructions for installing perl 
modules using "cpanm".

Did

cpan App::cpanminus

and then

cpanm Module::Package

This seemed to install a plethora of Modules.  I then tried

rpmbuild --rebuild perl-Unicode-EastAsianWidth-1.33-6.fc23.src.rpm

again, and got the same error messages as before.  So perhaps (somehow) 
my installation of perl modules was ineffective.  But at this stage I 
was just getting too flummoxed and bewildered and was feeling too far 
out of my depth, so I have for the time being at least given up.

It looks pretty hopeless to me.

cheers,

Rolf