TeX needs to know where to find the texinfo.tex file that the
\input texinfo command on the first line reads. The
texinfo.tex file tells TeX how to handle @-commands; it is
included in all standard GNU distributions.
Usually, the installer has put the texinfo.tex file in the
default directory that contains TeX macros when GNU Texinfo, Emacs or
other GNU software is installed. In this case, TeX will find the
file and you do not need to do anything special. If this has not been
done, you can put texinfo.tex in the current directory when you
run TeX, and TeX will find it there.
Also, you should install epsf.tex, if it is not already installed
from another distribution. More details are at the end of the description
of the @image command (see Images).
Likewise for pdfcolor.tex, if it is not already installed and you
use pdftex.
Optionally, you may create an additional texinfo.cnf, and install
it as well. This file is read by TeX when the @setfilename
command is executed (see @setfilename). You can put any
commands you like there, according to local site-wide conventions. They
will be read by TeX when processing any Texinfo document. For
example, if texinfo.cnf contains the line @afourpaper
(see A4 Paper), then all Texinfo documents will be processed with
that page size in effect. If you have nothing to put in
texinfo.cnf, you do not need to create it.
If neither of the above locations for these system files suffice for
you, you can specify the directories explicitly. For
texinfo.tex, you can do this by writing the complete path for the
file after the \input command. Another way, that works for both
texinfo.tex and texinfo.cnf (and any other file TeX
might read), is to set the TEXINPUTS environment variable in your
.cshrc or .profile file.
Which you use of .cshrc or .profile depends on
whether you use a Bourne shell-compatible (sh, bash,
ksh, ...) or C shell-compatible (csh, tcsh)
command interpreter. The latter read the .cshrc file for
initialization information, and the former read .profile.
In a .cshrc file, you could use the following csh command
sequence:
setenv TEXINPUTS .:/home/me/mylib:/usr/lib/tex/macros
In a .profile file, you could use the following sh command
sequence:
TEXINPUTS=.:/home/me/mylib:/usr/lib/tex/macros
export TEXINPUTS
On MS-DOS/MS-Windows, you would say it like this1:
set TEXINPUTS=.;d:/home/me/mylib;c:/usr/lib/tex/macros
It is customary for DOS/Windows users to put such commands in the
autoexec.bat file, or in the Windows Registry.
These settings would cause TeX to look for \input file first
in the current directory, indicated by the ., then in a
hypothetical user's me/mylib directory, and finally in a system
directory /usr/lib/tex/macros.
Finally, you may wish to dump a .fmt file (see Memory dumps) so that TeX can load Texinfo faster. (The
disadvantage is that then updating texinfo.tex requires
redumping.) You can do this by running this command, assuming
epsf.tex is findable by TeX:
initex texinfo @dump
(dump is a TeX primitive.) Then, move texinfo.fmt to
wherever your .fmt files are found; typically, this will be in the
subdirectory web2c of your TeX installation.