texi2dvi hangs with interactive prompt

Question

I have been trying to format a manual using texi2dvi --pdf. When I try to do so, it runs to what looks like completion, but then drops me into the TeX interactive prompt, *, with the message:

(Please type a command or say `\end')

Unfortunately, typing the end command does nothing (I just get the TeX prompt back). My guess would be that it expects something to be terminated that is not, but I don't get a message about an open environment not being closed, nor do I get any other error message. The last few lines of output are this:

Overfull \hbox (94.0258pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 2465--2465
 []    @texttt (:operator (!do ?operation) nil ((did ?operation)))[] 
[31] [32] [33] [34] [35] Chapter 7 [36] [37] Chapter 8 [38] [39] [40] [41]
Chapter 9 [42] Chapter 10 [43] Chapter 11 [44])

Any idea what could be wrong? If I had to guess, I would say that pdfetex/texi2dvi expects more input for some reason, but I don't know why.

The docs indicated that texi2dvi invokes pdfetex, so I tried that, as well, but it does the same thing: runs to what looks like completion and then drops me to the interactive prompt.

makeinfo --html works on the same file without any trouble.

Answer 1

This happened just because I was missing the @bye at the bottom of the texinfo file, which pdfetex needs, but makeinfo does not (having makinfo throw a warning when there's no @bye directive would probably be a Good Idea).

I was relying on emacs to close all the environments, but since @bye is not an environment closer (unlike in latex there is not a balanced begin and end of document), the texinfo mode in emacs couldn't figure that out.

Yes, yes, I know, I should have RTFM, but reading all the manuals is like reading all the EULAs -- no one's life is long enough! Hoping this helps someone else out.