Re: current cvs broke?

[Ethan A M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Friday 26 December 2008, pl...@pi... wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I just pulled a clean cvs and it fails at "make install"
> 
> 
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/svn/gnuplot/src'
> Making install in docs
> make[1]: Entering directory `/svn/gnuplot/docs'
> ../mkinstalldirs /usr/local/share/gnuplot/4.3
> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 gnuplot.gih
> /usr/local/share/gnuplot/4.3/gnuplot.gih
> Creating texinfo
> Symbol's value as variable is void: load
> make[1]: *** [gnuplot.texi] Error 255
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/svn/gnuplot/docs'
> make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1

For reasons that we have never pinned down, some people have trouble
regenerating the gnuplot.texi file from gnuplot.doc.  That is the reason
a pre-built version is included in the cvs repository and in the 
distribution, even though it is a derived file.   But it doesn't get
updated in cvs after every single change to gnuplot.doc.

Anyhow, your simplest fix is to do "touch gnuplot.texi" before
issuing the "make" command.  That will cause it to use the current
version rather than trying to rebuild it from source.  I'll update
the copy in cvs the next time I am working on it.

If it were up to me, I would drop the texinfo support altogether.
It's got to be the world's most cumbersome and worst-designed
documentation system.


> BTW , INSTALL instructions for Unix bases system says just run
> configure. 

The INSTALL file contains instructions relevant to people who
receive it as part of the distribution package.  But you are building
directly from the CVS source; that is not the process it describes.

> This does not exist! As a wild guess I ran ./prepare so I 
> dont know if that is correct. Why are there no valid installation
> instructions included with the source code?

You can find several sets of instructions on SourceForge, which is the
same place you must have obtained the CVS source. 

   http://gnuplot.sourceforge.net/development/index.html

-- 
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742