On Tue, Jun 24, 2025 at 03:03:51PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote: > For many years (dating back to when I maintained Texinfo), the way > Texinfo gets to CTAN is that I download the distribution tarball(s), > unpack it in ftp://tug.org/tex/texinfo*, and CTAN mirrors from there. > The CTAN metadata does not get updated in that process. It would not be > simple to do that. At best we could remove all the version-specific > stuff in the metadata, as we've done with other mirrored packages. > > The slightly-stale texinfo.zip file was probably autocreated on the CTAN > end at one point. > > In any case ... overall, I don't see a good reason to keep the Texinfo > sources/distribution on CTAN nowadays, and I'd be happy to stop doing > the manual mirroring. Thus my suggestion is > > 1) delete CTAN:macros/texinfo/texinfo and texinfo.zip; > 2) I will delete the texinfo directories on tug.org; > 3) CTAN and I can work out some description so that > https://ctan.org/pkg/texinfo explains the situation.
As far as I understand, we won't need the following in the instructions for making a release, in README-hacking in the Texinfo sources: # Official releases only: Contact r...@tug.org to update texinfo at tug.org. # If r...@tug.org doesn't reply, can try webmas...@tug.org, # or (last resort) bo...@tug.org. People on the Codeberg thread were also discussing TeX Live, although I don't know where that fits in. Presumably the TeX Live maintainers know where to get Texinfo if they want to distribute it (or any parts of it). > Also, not related to the original report, but while we're here, I > suggest moving CTAN:macros/texinfo/contrib, or rather its single subdir > texinfo-hu, to obsolete (and deleting contrib/). It contains a version > of texinfo.tex from 2007, adapted to (if I remember right) Hungarian. I > can't imagine that it is still of any use today. > > That will just leave macros/texinfo/latest, which contains only those > files which are updated on their own on ftp.gnu.org. That can remain > unchanged. At the moment we don't upload any of the following to ftp.gnu.org: texinfo-jp.tex texinfo-zh.tex or any of the translation files: txi-ca.tex txi-en.tex txi-fr.tex txi-it.tex txi-nl.tex txi-pt.tex txi-tr.tex txi-cs.tex txi-es.tex txi-hu.tex txi-ja.tex txi-nn.tex txi-ru.tex txi-uk.tex txi-de.tex txi-fi.tex txi-is.tex txi-nb.tex txi-pl.tex txi-sr.tex txi-zh.tex We also distribute a copy of "epsf.tex", again, not on ftp.gnu.org - this is a public domain file from 2011 for including Encapsulated Postscript graphics, from Tom Rokicki. I'm mentioning this in case it causes a problem. These files rarely change, any way. > What does everyone think? --thanks, karl. >
