R devel - Oct 2015 - Building manuals are failing now that MikTex 2.9 has removed texi2dvi.exe

According to the MikTex bug reports [1], MikTex 2.9 has removed
texi2dvi.exe last week (on 2015-09-29) as "it was not compatible
(anymore) with the original shell script texi2dvi (GNU Texinfo)." I
found this out the hard way as I just (unknowingly) updated MikTex
this evening, and then, while building R-devel_2015-10-08 on Windows7
64bit using the Rtools 3.3 toolchain (4.9.3 branch), had it crash
during `make manuals` with:

Output written on fullrefman.pdf (3468 pages, 9511515 bytes).
Transcript written on fullrefman.log.
creating doc/manual/version.texi
texi2dvi --pdf --texinfo="@set UseExternalXrefs " R-FAQ.texi
texi2dvi: not found
make[1]: *** [R-FAQ.pdf] Error 127
make: *** [manuals] Error 2

Outside of trying to dig up an old (and now obsolete) version of the
executable, what can be, or should be, done to build the manuals, or
have we lost that ability?

Thank you,

Avi

[1] http://sourceforge.net/p/miktex/bugs/2400/

Hmm, look in MkRules.dist for the setting you failed to make .... 
Obviously available in R-patched and R-devel only as we cannot foretell 
such changes.

On 09/10/2015 06:24, Avraham Adler wrote:
> According to the MikTex bug reports [1], MikTex 2.9 has removed
> texi2dvi.exe last week (on 2015-09-29) as "it was not compatible
> (anymore) with the original shell script texi2dvi (GNU Texinfo)." I
> found this out the hard way as I just (unknowingly) updated MikTex
> this evening, and then, while building R-devel_2015-10-08 on Windows7
> 64bit using the Rtools 3.3 toolchain (4.9.3 branch), had it crash
Note what the posting guide says about not abusing the word 'crash'.
> during `make manuals` with:
>
> Output written on fullrefman.pdf (3468 pages, 9511515 bytes).
> Transcript written on fullrefman.log.
> creating doc/manual/version.texi
> texi2dvi --pdf --texinfo="@set UseExternalXrefs " R-FAQ.texi
> texi2dvi: not found
> make[1]: *** [R-FAQ.pdf] Error 127
> make: *** [manuals] Error 2
>
> Outside of trying to dig up an old (and now obsolete) version of the
> executable, what can be, or should be, done to build the manuals, or
> have we lost that ability?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Avi
>
> [1] http://sourceforge.net/p/miktex/bugs/2400/

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford
1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK

On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 1:44 AM, Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at
stats.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hmm, look in MkRules.dist for the setting you failed to make .... Obviously
> available in R-patched and R-devel only as we cannot foretell such changes.
>
>[snip]
Yes, I see my error. For efficiency, I had copied in an old pre-filled
Mkrules.local; penny wise and pound foolish.
> Note what the posting guide says about not abusing the word
'crash'.
My apologies for the word "crash." More accurate would have been
"properly halted."

Thank you very much,

Avi