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.
