Info manuals from packages not showing up in info

Question

I was just fooled by an old org info file that was hanging around in my info dir. I assumed that when I call

(use-package wanderlust
  :ensure t)

That the current info file would be installed automatically.

The following from the elisp manual would indicate that this is so:

If the content directory contains a file named ‘dir’, this is assumed to be an Info directory file made with ‘install-info’. *Note Invoking install-info: (texinfo)Invoking install-info. The relevant Info files should also be present in the content directory. In this case, Emacs will automatically add the content directory to ‘Info-directory-list’ when the package is activated.

Yet, they do not show up. Is there something else to do in my init.el file to make this work?

Regards,

Answer 1

I came up with this addition to my init file to deal with the problem.

(require 'f)
(require 'dash)

(defun pack-info-add-directories ()
  (let ((old-info-dirs Info-directory-list))
    (setq Info-directory-list nil)
    (setq Info-directory-list
          (-concat
           (--filter (file-exists-p (expand-file-name "dir" it))
                     (f-directories package-user-dir))
           old-info-dirs))))
(add-hook 'after-init-hook 'pack-info-add-directories)

This adds the package directories with dir files to the front of the Info-directory-list. I invoke in the after-init-hook so it picks up any packages installed later on in the init file.

I found that I also had to delete the stock org info file from the system info dir in order for the current version to show up. I used this shell command to do so.

sudo ginstall-info --delete /usr/local/share/info/org.info.gz /usr/local/share/info/dir

I hope this helps someone. Better, someone can explain the canonical way to achieve the same thing.

Answer 2

My understanding is that you would need the wanderlust devs to change the structure in which their package is installed.

By studying the below code in package.el

;; Add info node.
(when (file-exists-p (expand-file-name "dir" pkg-dir))
  ;; FIXME: not the friendliest, but simple.
  (require 'info)
  (info-initialize)
  (push pkg-dir Info-directory-list))

.. and few packages (like debbugs, ivy, magit) that have their Info documents added to the Info-directory-list correctly, the structure of files has to be as follows in your elpa/ dir:

elpa/
  pkg-version/
    dir # not a directory but a file that describes 
        # where that Info document sits in the hierarchy
    pkg.info
    pkg.el
    pkg.elc
    ...

---

For example, this is what the dir file looks like for the magit package:

This is the file .../info/dir, which contains the
topmost node of the Info hierarchy, called (dir)Top.
The first time you invoke Info you start off looking at this node.

File: dir,      Node: Top       This is the top of the INFO tree

  This (the Directory node) gives a menu of major topics.
  Typing "q" exits, "?" lists all Info commands, "d" returns here,
  "h" gives a primer for first-timers,
  "mEmacs<Return>" visits the Emacs manual, etc.

  In Emacs, you can click mouse button 2 on a menu item or cross reference
  to select it.

* Menu:

Emacs
* Magit: (magit).               Using Git from Emacs with Magit.