Re: Binutils release 2.40 require texinfo due to missing gas .info files

[Benson Muite]

Thanks for checking this.

>> The current binutils release 2.40 requires texinfo to build from source
>> because gas does not have .info files. 
> 
> I believe that it does:
> 
>   % tar tvf binutils-2.40.tar.xz | grep as.info
>   -rw-rw-rw- root/root   1220923 2023-01-14 00:00
> binutils-2.40/gas/doc/as.info
> 
> 
>> Typically texinfo is only needed
>> if the .texi files are modified as releases should contain .info files.
> 
> But when you extract files from a tarball they all end up having the same
> creation date, so the make system will believe that it needs to generate
> the info files.  If you touch the files first then the problem is avoided:
> 
>   % tar xvf binutils-2.40.tar.xz
>   % find binutils-2.40 -name "*.info" -exec touch {} \;
> 
This helps. However, the build script removes config.texi and then
copies all.texi into config.texi changing timestamps and forcing a
rebuild that requires makeinfo. This seems to have been encountered
elsewhere, for example https://github.com/spack/spack/pull/34173

The reason for doing this during the build is unclear to me. The
simplest fix is making a copy that preserves timestamps, but other
solutions such as not removing and replacing, or building just using
config.texi seem fine.