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 variable is most commonly used here. Any Texinfo source file must end in the .texi, .txi, or .texinfo extension. We recommend .texi for new manuals.

Automake generates rules to build .info, .dvi, .ps, .pdf and .html files from your Texinfo sources. The .info files are built by make all and installed by make install (unless you use no-installinfo, see below). The other files can be built on request by make dvi, make ps, make pdf and make html.

If the .texi file @includes version.texi, then that file will be automatically generated. The file version.texi defines four Texinfo flag you can reference using @value{EDITION}, @value{VERSION}, @value{UPDATED}, and @value{UPDATED-MONTH}.

EDITION

VERSION

Both of these flags hold the version number of your program. They are kept separate for clarity.

UPDATED

This holds the date the primary .texi file was last modified.

UPDATED-MONTH

This holds the name of the month in which the primary .texi file was last modified.

The version.texi support requires the mdate-sh program; this program is supplied with Automake and automatically included when automake is invoked with the --add-missing option.

If you have multiple Texinfo files, and you want to use the version.texi feature, then you have to have a separate version file for each Texinfo file. Automake will treat any include in a Texinfo file that matches ‘vers*.texi’ just as an automatically generated version file.

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 GNU 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 (this can be changed using the TEXINFO_TEX variable, see below). However, if you used AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR in configure.ac (see Finding ‘configure’ Input in The Autoconf Manual), then texinfo.tex is looked for there. Automake supplies texinfo.tex if ‘--add-missing’ is given.

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, ps, and pdf targets to still work.

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

The following variables are used by the Texinfo build rules.

MAKEINFO ¶

The name of the program invoked to build .info files. This variable is defined by Automake. If the makeinfo program is found on the system then it will be used by default; otherwise missing will be used instead.

MAKEINFOHTML ¶

The command invoked to build .html files. Automake defines this to $(MAKEINFO) --html.

MAKEINFOFLAGS ¶

User flags passed to each invocation of $(MAKEINFO) and $(MAKEINFOHTML). This user variable (see Variables reserved for the user) is not expected to be defined in any Makefile; it can be used by users to pass extra flags to suit their needs.

AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS ¶

AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS ¶

Maintainer flags passed to each makeinfo invocation. These are maintainer variables that can be overridden in Makefile.am. $(AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS) is passed to makeinfo when building .info files; and $(AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS) is used when building .html files.

For instance the following setting can be used to obtain one single .html file per manual, without node separators.

AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS = --no-headers --no-split

By default, $(AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS) is set to $(AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS). This means that defining $(AM_MAKEINFOFLAGS) without defining $(AM_MAKEINFOHTMLFLAGS) will impact builds of both .info and .html files.

TEXI2DVI ¶

The name of the command that converts a .texi file into a .dvi file. This defaults to texi2dvi, a script that ships with the Texinfo package.

TEXI2PDF ¶

The name of the command that translates a .texi file into a .pdf file. This defaults to $(TEXI2DVI) --pdf --batch.

DVIPS ¶

The name of the command that build a .ps file out of a .dvi file. This defaults to dvips.

TEXINFO_TEX ¶

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