Where is the info viewer?

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 12 Sep 2019 14:39:42 +0200, Per Hedeland wrote:
> On 2019-09-12 02:58, Polytropon wrote:
> > On Wed, 11 Sep 2019 18:47:17 +0200, Per Hedeland wrote:
> >> But, but... - surely there are no info files in base? They live in
> >> /usr/local/share/info, which should be enough of an indication, but
> >> just to make sure:
> >>
> >> $ ls /usr/share/info
> >> ls: /usr/share/info: No such file or directory
> >> $ ls /usr/local/share/info | wc -l
> >>         78
> >> $ pkg which /usr/local/share/info/* | grep 'installed by package' | wc -l
> >>         77
> >> $ pkg which /usr/local/share/info/* | grep -v 'installed by package'
> >> /usr/local/share/info/dir was not found in the database
> >> $ cat /usr/local/share/info/dir
> >> Produced by: indexinfo 0.3.1.
> >>
> >> File: dir,      Node: Top       This is the top of the INFO tree
> >> ...
> > 
> > I think you have obtained this from a current FreeBSD version.
> 
> Correct, sorry for not mentioning that - it was 12.0-RELEASE (i.e.
> indeed current but not CURRENT:-). I now also checked 10.3-RELEASE -
> had ~20 files in /usr/share/info and not even the directory
> /usr/local/share/info, but quite a few files in /usr/local/info - and
> 11.1-RELEASE - had neither /usr/share/info nor /usr/local/share/info,
> but many files in /usr/local/info, so it seems no info files in base
> there either - and I wouldn't really call 11.1-RELEASE "current"...

You can easily differentiate:

/usr/share/info is (correct: was) created by the OS and populated
with info files corresponding to GNU software components.

/usr/local/info and /usr/local/share/info (correct location) are
created as needed by a port, and populated by whatever info files
that port will install. On a fresh FreeBSD install, they typically
do not exist; no file in /etc/mtree does contain an entry for a
directory named "info" in the /usr/local subtree (whereas on older
FreeBSD versions, those _were_ created as empty directories when
the OS was installed).



> > Older versions still had *.info.gz files in /usr/share/info,
> > and I may construct the following assumption: Lots of info-based
> > documentation was part of GCC, and as this has been obsoleted by
> > CLang/LLVM (is that the correct spelling?), the GCC info files
> > have been removed. Other GNU-based tools also were rewritten for
> > FreeBSD, and removed, so _if_ there are no more info files in the
> > base system, the removal of the corresponding reader program is
> > understandable.
> 
> Yes, per above the info files in base were gone already in
> 11.1-RELEASE (maybe even in 11.0-RELEASE) - I don't have a later 11.x
> to check, but I think it's unlikely that any of those have added info
> files in base.

Thanks for verifying this and adding a version number.


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