20.1.4 Batch Formatting

You can format Texinfo files for Info using batch-texinfo-format and Emacs batch mode. You can run Emacs in batch mode from any shell, including a shell inside of Emacs. (See Initial Options in The GNU Emacs Manual.)

Here is a shell command to format all the files that end in .texinfo in the current directory:

emacs -batch -funcall batch-texinfo-format *.texinfo

Emacs processes all the files listed on the command line, even if an error occurs while attempting to format some of them.

Run batch-texinfo-format only with Emacs in batch mode as shown; it is not interactive. It kills the batch mode Emacs on completion.

batch-texinfo-format is convenient if you lack makeinfo and want to format several Texinfo files at once. When you use Batch mode, you create a new Emacs process. This frees your current Emacs, so you can continue working in it. (When you run texinfo-format-region or texinfo-format-buffer, you cannot use that Emacs for anything else until the command finishes.)