Where is the info viewer?

[Polytropon]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2019 20:51:32 -0400 (EDT), doug wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Sep 2019, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> 
> > Dear Colleagues,
> >
> > I've noticed that the info utility has disappeared from the recent
> > versions of FreeBSD.
> >
> > There are a lot of info files in /usr/local/share/info/, what should I
> > read them with other than less ?
> 
> Before this thread I was (blissfully??) ignorant of info files, /usr/share/info/ 
> having totally escaped my notice.

As opposed to UNIX, info files are the typical way of delivering
local documentation on Linux, or _have been_ (due to the significant
change in documentation attitude)...



> As my workstation is kind of old, I still have 
> texinfo, so I took a look at the make documentation.

Older FreeBSD versions had /usr/bin/info as part of the base system.



> Some useful stuff. So my 
> question [ at last :) ] Why remove the command and not reformat the files or 
> make them a part of one or both ports? The files are relatively useless without 
> texinfo or pinfo.

It's like how tools like dig and bind disappeared from the base system.
They are now in ports and can be installed optionally. However, if a
documentation file is still part of the OS, and installed along with
the tools comprising the OS, the corresponding reader (!) should also
be part of the OS. Or at least a placeholder, which could be a script
that simply echo "This tool is no longer part of FreeBSD, please install
this or that.", exit 0. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...