On 2024-02-01 18:08, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> That assumes you downloaded a tarball.  Very little about INSTALL
> applies to building from git export.

Yeah, it does presuppose the tarball.  So I grabbed 5.9 from sourceforge 
and tried again.  With yodl installed that './Doc/help.txt' is not 
complained about, however its contents are exactly the same.  Seems not 
what one might expect to see in a 'help.txt' sort of file but I suppose 
there's a reason:  Those are like aliases, no?

exit bye
cd chdir
typeset declare
typeset float
fc history
typeset integer
typeset local
exit logout
print pushln
fc r
typeset readonly
hash rehash
whence type
unhash unalias
unhash unfunction
whence where
whence which
-----------------------------

The 'C02' test reports the same error.  I'm tempted to fiddle with a 
copy of the test and see just what's going on there.  I doubt anything 
is really broken, as you say.

% make install.info

... reports:

/bin/sh: 4: makeinfo: not found
make[1]: *** [Makefile:498: install.info] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/aWorking/Zsh/zsh-5.9/Doc'
make: *** [Makefile:255: install.info] Error 2

Debian has no such thing as 'makeinfo' but it does have 'install-info' 
and file 'INSTALL' does say:

If the programme install-info is available, "make install.info" will
insert an entry in the file "dir" in the same directory as the info ...

... so is the script looking for the wrong program?  I edited the script 
as shown on the screen but with the above edit and it exited the 
terminal (as expected) but 'info' still reports version 5.8.  So nothing 
broke at least.  I expect that 'make' handles that script in a more 
sophisticated way than I can duplicate.

But all else seems well.