10.1 Texinfo

If the current directory contains Texinfo source, you must declare it with the ‘TEXINFOS’ primary. Generally Texinfo files are converted into info, and thus the info_TEXINFOS macro is most commonly used here. Note that any Texinfo source file must end in the ‘.texi’ or ‘.texinfo’ extension.

If the ‘.texi’ file @includes version.texi, then that file will be automatically generated. version.texi defines three Texinfo macros you can reference: EDITION, VERSION, and UPDATED. The first two hold the version number of your package (but are kept separate for clarity); the last is the date the primary file was last modified. The version.texi support requires the mdate-sh program; this program is supplied with Automake.

Sometimes an info file actually depends on more than one ‘.texi’ file. For instance, in GNU Hello, hello.texi includes the file gpl.texi. You can tell Automake about these dependencies using the ‘texi_TEXINFOS’ variable. Here is how Hello does it:

info_TEXINFOS = hello.texi
hello_TEXINFOS = gpl.texi

By default, Automake requires the file texinfo.tex to appear in the same directory as the Texinfo source. However, if you used AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR in configure.in, then texinfo.tex is looked for there. Automake supplies texinfo.tex if ‘--add-missing’ is given.

If your package has Texinfo files in many directories, you can use the variable TEXINFO_TEX to tell automake where to find the canonical texinfo.tex for your package. The value of this variable should be the relative path from the current Makefile.am to texinfo.tex:

TEXINFO_TEX = ../doc/texinfo.tex

The option ‘no-texinfo.tex’ can be used to eliminate the requirement for texinfo.tex. Use of the variable TEXINFO_TEX is preferable, however, because that allows the dvi target to still work.

Automake generates an install-info target; some people apparently use this. By default, info pages are installed by ‘make install’. This can be prevented via the no-installinfo option.