What is makeinfo, and how do I get it?

In (at least) Ubuntu when using bash, it tells you what package you need to install if you type in a command and its not found in your path. My terminal says you need to install 'texinfo' package.

sudo apt-get install texinfo

Need to install texinfo. configure will still have the cache of its results so it will still think makeinfo is missing. Blow away your source and unpack it again from the tarball. run configure then make.

If you build packages from scratch:

• Download a version from here: http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
  • As of writing, version 5.2 is the latest.
• Learn how to build here: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/view/stable/chapter05/texinfo.html
  • LFS project is constantly updating, but texinfo build/install instructions rarely change.

Specifically, if you build bash from source, install docs, including man pages, will fail (silently) without makeinfo available.

A few words on "what is makeinfo" -- other answers cover "how do I get it" well.

The section "Creating an Info File" of the Texinfo manual states that

makeinfo is a program that converts a Texinfo file into an Info file, HTML file, or plain text.

The Texinfo home page explains that Texinfo itself "is the official documentation format of the GNU project" and that it "uses a single source file to produce output in a number of formats, both online and printed (dvi, html, info, pdf, xml, etc.)".

To sum up: Texinfo is a documentation source file format and makeinfo is the program that turns source files in Texinfo format into the desired output.

On SuSE linux, you can use the following command to install 'texinfo':

sudo zypper install texinfo

On my system, it shows it is downloading about 1000 MiB, so make sure you have enough free space.

If it doesn't show up in your package manager (i.e. apt-cache search texinfo) and even apt-file search bin/makeinfo is no help, you may have to enable non-free/restricted packages for your package manager.

For ubuntu, sudo $EDITOR /etc/apt/sources.list and add restricted.

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main

For debian, sudo $EDITOR /etc/apt/sources.list and add non-free. You can even have preferences on package level if you don't want to clutter the package db with non-free stuff.

After a sudo apt-get udpate you should find the required package.