Re: automake parallel install stuff

[Havoc Pennington]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes: 
> Doesn't `configure --program-suffix=-1.5' work? 

It probably would, sure. I just didn't think of it.
 
> Would it be the job of `make install' to handle this symlink?
> If yes, how should it be updated?  Say I install
> Automake-1.5 *after* Automake-1.6, should automake point to
> automake-1.5 or automake-1.6?

What I do for GConf (a gnome package I maintain) is have "make
install" for all versions create the symlink; but in RPM format, only
the latest version contains it. The symlink is omitted from all but
the most recent RPM.

Debian packagers could instead use their "alternatives" system
probably to be sure the symlink always exists and even let people
configure which version it points to.

It's a bit lame that the order of install matters; you could imagine
having a "make install" that's more sophisticated about this and will
only move the symlink to newer versions I guess. A more radical
solution would be to drop the symlink and require people to specify
the version they want, but that has some downsides.
 
>  Havoc> @@ -156,6 +156,9 @@
>  Havoc> local (@dirlist);
>  Havoc> local ($print_and_exit) = 0;
>  
>  Havoc> +    ## put in -I /usr/share/aclocal always 
>  Havoc> +    push (@dirlist, "@datadir@/aclocal");
>  Havoc> +
>  Havoc> while (@arglist)
>  Havoc> {
>  Havoc> if ($arglist[0] =~ /^--acdir=(.+)$/)
> 
> It seems you'd better move that `push' after the `while' loop,
> otherwise the files in @datadir@/aclocal will override the user
> files (the converse is expected).

Thanks, good point.

Havoc