Re: removing previous info files

[Karl Berry]

    Are we talking about the following change?

That's probably what I was remembering.  But of course Nelson's report
is referring to $(infodir), not the build dir.

    So I believe either automake should be modified to create info files
    directly in the install directory, 

I had something else in mind: automake creating the info files as it
does now, in the build directory (definitely necessary anyway), but
removing all the files for the manual from $(infodir) before it installs
them.

    or clean_old_split_files should be moved to the install-info tool.  

Despite its name, right now install-info has nothing to do with
installing info files.  It simply messes with the dir file.  Until this
changes, I don't think we should add such functionality there.

    First option will destroy existing documentation in case of an error

Well, this is a different subject, but Automake now goes to a lot of
trouble to preserve existing info files even in the build directory.

Which, by the way, makes any actual errors be off my screen when I run
make, it'd be great if that code could be tightened onto fewer lines a
la gcc dependency compilations.  Personally, I'm not entirely sure it's
an improvement, but I guess you did it because other people wanted it,
so ok ...

thanks,
k