[MASTER] Conflict between dpkg install-info and GNU install-info

Binary package hint: dpkg

GNU install-info (originally shipped with texinfo; now a separate package in Debian) and dpkg install-info are incompatible.

Symptom:
Package installation fails with the error message "install-info: no dir file specified"

Workaround:
Rename or remove GNU install-info at least temporarily. Often it will have been installed as /usr/local/bin/install-info

Root cause:
dpkg pre 1.15.4 used to ship its own, incompatible version of install-info. Various postinst etc scripts would invoke install-info with parameters which are acceptable to dpkg install-info, but incompatible with GNU install-info. Hence, if the PATH was set up so that a locally-installed GNU install-info got invoked from the postinst script, it would fail.

This typically happens to users who have installed a third-party package such as TexLive2008 in /usr/local

As far as the upstream Debian infrastructure is concerned, an important milestone is dpkg 1.15.4 which was included in Karmic. The fix is for dpkg to also use GNU install-info.

However, this still fails to address the situation when an incompatible install-info is in dpkg's PATH before the Debian versions.

See also http://wiki.debian.org/Transitions/DpkgToGnuInstallInfo

I'm taking the liberty to create a new bug report to collect duplicates reported against various packages. This is a known problem, it is already fixed upstream; I just want there to be a central MASTER bug to collect all such reports.