#3744 Upcoming texinfo release will break creation of html-documenation

[Stefan Husmann]

The upcoming texinfo relase will most probably introduce the need of a change in the way the HTML documentation is generated in maxima's build process.

I maintain PKGBUILDs for both maxima and texinfo which are checking the latest sources from your and texinfo's git repos.
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/texinfo-git/
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/maxima-git/

If texinfo 6.7 is installed, all is fine, but with texinfo from git I get
/usr/bin/env perl ./create_index maxima_toc.html
Can't open maxima_toc.html at ./create_index line 14.

and indeed the file is missing. I tried to run build_html.sh -D, but not further output was generated.

[Stefan Husmann]

texinfo 6.8 has now been released, so I guess this problem might affect a broader audience now.

[David Billinghurst]

This affects me. I can confirm reverting to texinfo-6.7 works around the problem.

[David Scherfgen]

In Maxima 5.50post the HTML manual builds with current texinfo. doc/info/build_html.sh detects makeinfo 6.8 or higher and relies on texi2any's own index.html; it no longer invokes ./create_index and no longer needs maxima_toc.html, so the reported "Can't open maxima_toc.html at ./create_index line 14" cannot occur (create_index survives only as an EXTRA_DIST entry in doc/info/Makefile.am). Against GNU texinfo 7.1 the script exits 0 and produces the complete 108-file manual including index.html and maxima_singlepage.html, with only the pre-existing "@ref should not appear on @item line" warnings, and build_html.sh -D prints its debug trace again.

$ makeinfo --version | head -1
texi2any (GNU texinfo) 7.1
$ ./build_html.sh; echo EXIT=$?
...
makeinfo version 6.8 or higher detected. index.html should be generated automatically.
EXIT=0

Verified by Claude.