bug#36828: 27.0.50; Uninstalled emacs shows installed documentation

[Óscar Fuentes]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> I no longer remember the details from what I discovered back there, so
> expect some repeated questions, mistakes, and confusion.  Apologies in
> advance.

It's all my fault for delaying this task for a long time.

> I note that the directories you show now are different from what you
> reported back then: more place for confusion.

I made a new build directory for a debug build. The only thing that
changes is `debug' instead of `build' on the paths.

>> I propose the reverse: unconditionally test for the non-installed NEWS and
>> adjust Vdata_directory if it exists. Something like this (untested for
>> the installed emacs case):
>
> I'm not sure I understand the relevance of data-directory to the issue
> at hand.

data-directory is used for locating the NEWS file and, IIRC, other
documentation.

> AFAIR you were talking about the Info documentation,

No, it was about NEWS. Although making it work for the Info
documentation would be nice too (my proposed change does not provide
that).

> but that is looked up in configure-info-directory; see
> Info-default-directory-list. We only use data-directory for that in
> the NS builds, which I believe is not your case.

It is not, indeed.

> If this all is due to the fact I pointed to this code, then either I
> was mistaken (sorry!), or there's something I discovered back then,
> but forgot in the meantime.
>
> So I guess we need to back up a notch and see how all this is related
> to Info manuals?  Or what else am I missing?

For the time being, I propose that we concentrate on NEWS, which
motivated this bug report. Then we can move on to the Info
documentation.