Re: Core-utils 7.2; building only 'su'

[Douglas Held]

Well, you would just change autoconf so that it fails fast when its
configuration is not "well formed"...

On Wed, Apr 15, 2009 at 7:54 PM, Bob Friesenhahn
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Apr 2009, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>>
>>  The problem is that DESTDIR is not a mandatory standard and
>>  packages may not adequately implement it even if Automake itself
>>  does the right thing.  If INSTALL says that DESTDIR is supported
>>  and a package blindly includes the INSTALL file, then package users
>>  may end up with a very unpleasant surprise (e.g. damaged operating
>>  system) if the package misbehaves with DESTDIR.
>>
>> This is already the case for INSTALL.  For example, `make uninstall'
>> is often broken in many packages.  Same for --program-prefix.
>>
>> The INSTALL file is probobly the best place to document this.
>
> In the autotools world, some packages are more equal than others. Some
> packages are created via manual 'tar' of a source tree, others are created
> by 'make dist', while others are created via 'make distcheck'.  If the
> package is created via 'make distcheck' then we have some confidence that
> DESTDIR and uninstall should work.
>
> There are a lot of otherwise intelligent package developers who just can't
> seem to figure out how to properly use autotools, or just do a crappy job.
>  As a result, many packages do not survive 'make distcheck', properly
> support DESTDIR, or know how to uninstall themselves.
>
> If there was a way that a package could be "blessed" when it is created so
> that the user knows that this package is endowed by its creator with correct
> operation then end-users could know if DESTDIR is likely to work and that if
> they use 'make DESTDIR=/foo install' as root that it is not going to
> overwrite files outside of /foo.
>
> Perhaps someone here can figure out how to apply this blessing so that it is
> possible for the end user to know if the package will follow the rules.
>
> Bob
> --
> Bob Friesenhahn
> address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
> GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
>



-- 
Douglas Held
address@hidden
+447986527654
+1 (415) 830-6123