Re: Better Help Docs Searching?

[Zach Riggle <zachriggle@gmail.com>]

Follow-up-to-follow-up, and apologies for the spam.  It appears that,
while "make info" worked, it did not actually generate anything useful
in "Doc/zsh.texi".

  $ make info
  makeinfo ./zsh.texi

  $ git status --ignored -sb | grep '!!' | awk '{print $2}' | xargs wc -l
       114 Config/defs.mk
       655 Doc/Makefile
        36 Doc/Zsh/manmodmenu.yo
       221 Doc/Zsh/modlist.yo
        38 Doc/Zsh/modmenu.yo
         9 Doc/version.yo
         2 Doc/zsh.info <------- two bytes
         0 Doc/zsh.texi <------- zero
       292 Etc/Makefile
       403 Makefile
       452 Src/Makefile
       306 Test/Makefile
     22195 config.log
       194 config.modules.sh
      1368 config.status
     16791 configure
     43076 total

Zach Riggle

On Tue, Aug 3, 2021 at 3:03 AM Zach Riggle <zachriggle@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Okay, I'm a bit of an idiot.  I've been so spoiled by "brew install"
> that I forgot to "autoconf && ./configure".
>
> This explains the "make" failures I was getting above.  "make info"
> now works for me, and generates "Docs/zsh.texi".
>
> I don't want to "make install" and break things by putting stuff in
> /usr/local (and I expect that using --prefix=some/other/directory will
> prevent "info" from actually finding that content) -- so information
> on how to generate the indices for the "info" command would still be
> welcome.
>
> I spent a while on Google searching things like "gnu info generate
> (index|indices)" but can't really find much.  "man info" isn't
> helpful, and "info info" is doubly unhelpful.
>
> Zach Riggle
>
> On Tue, Aug 3, 2021 at 12:45 AM Zach Riggle <zachriggle@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks for all of the info (pun intended!), guys.
> >
> > I've never intentionally used the "info" command, only used it
> > accidentally when I didn't import my zsh logging library (which
> > defines debug/info/warn/err/die etc for use in my various scripts).
> >
> > ## Using Info
> > When I invoke "info zsh" on my system (macOS 12) I do get some output.
> > However when I hit shift-i, the status line at the bottom states "No
> > indices found."
> >
> > Invoking manually doesn't work either, so I think there's something
> > broken about the default install of Zsh on macOS (though I *also* have
> > it installed via homebrew).
> >
> >     $ info --index-search=read zsh
> >     no index entries found for `read'
> >
> > The "g" command works to jump between commands (e.g. "g read" takes me
> > to the equivalent of read(2) man pages).
> >
> > I get "No indices found" for "info read" as well.  :(
> >
> > ## Building Info from Source
> > It seems that I'm doing this incorrectly.  I inspected the Makefile
> > and there is *definitely* an "info" target, but Make doesn't seem to
> > like it.  I tried both with the OS-provided GNU Make (3.81), and also
> > with Homebrew installed GNU Make (4.3).
> >
> >    $ make info
> >     make: *** No rule to make target `info'.  Stop.
> >
> > There is definitely an "info" target.
> >
> >     $ grep -E '\binfo\b' Makefile.in | head -1
> >     dvi ps html info pdf:
> >
> > Even trying to make it manually doesn't work
> >
> >     $ make -C Doc -f Makefile.in info
> >     Makefile.in:30: *** missing separator.  Stop.
> >
> > ## Other Info Curiosities
> > One thing that I really like / prefer about man pages is the $MANPAGER
> > variable, which I have configured to use bat(3) [1] as my pager, which
> > gives syntax highlighting, highlights command names, and flag names.
> > Is there an equivalent for "info" pages?
> >
> > Here's a few examples:
> > * sh: https://i.imgur.com/rGjQo9v.png
> > * bash: https://i.imgur.com/ymnDh5V.png
> > * git: https://i.imgur.com/ABqbZmE.png
> >
> > [1]: export MANPAGER="sh -c 'col -bx | bat -l man -p'"
> >     (See https://github.com/sharkdp/bat#man.  The entire "bat" project
> > is truly amazing.)
> >
> > Zach Riggle
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 3:11 PM Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 2021-08-01 11:52 a.m., Bart Schaefer wrote:
> > > > On Sun, Aug 1, 2021 at 9:33 AM Stephane Chazelas <stephane@chazelas.org> wrote:
> > > >> It's really astonishing that so few people know about it after
> > > >> so many decades it's been around.
> > > Little tidbits like you guys have just coughed up would have saved God
> > > knows how much frustration here.  There's always a solution, but finding
> > > it might not be so easy.
> > > > GNU made a push some years ago to try to move everything from "man" to
> > > > "info", but it never really took hold.
> > > Strange, isn't it?  Something in the culture sticks to the trusted
> > > tradition even when a clear improvement is available.  Seems to be a
> > > Linux/Unix wide thing.  I still remember my first successful install of
> > > Linux.  Bash without even command recall and no DELETE key, and one was
> > > expected to either already know emacs or to use the nano editor.  DOS
> > > seemed advanced by comparison.  Even zsh, one might think there's be
> > > some default to user friendly setup out of the box but that's not the
> > > way.  Anyway not to whine -- thanks for the 'info' tips.
> > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >