Re: OS-sympathetic installation (fwd)

[David Lee]

On Wed, 14 Feb 2001, Olly Betts wrote:

> In message <address@hidden>,
>  David Lee writes:
> >But the "big picture" is to be able to produce something along the lines of:
> >
> >   # Directories...
> >   $prefix=/usr
> >[...]
> >
> >   # Installables
> >   %system all
> >   f 0555 root sys ${libdir}/libgdbm.so.2.0.0 .libs/libgdbm.so.2.0.0
> >   l 0555 root sys ${libdir}/libgdbm.so.2 libgdbm.so.2.0.0
> >[...]
> >
> >(which particular case happens to be suitable for ESP's "epm" generic
> >package manager).  "libtool" would need to be responsible for the lines
> >containing "libgdbm".
> 
> The simplest approach seems to be to install to a scratch directory, then
> build the package from there.  So unpack a tarball from `make dist' and
> then do this:
> 
> ./configure --prefix=/usr
> make
> make install-strip 'prefix=$SCRATCH_DIR/usr'
> 
> For one of my projects I added a rule to build rpms to Makefile.am using
> this approach.  I've attached a slightly simplified version (the full
> version build sub-rpms).  A similar approach will probably work for any
> package manager which can make a package without having to install it.

Ah!  The alternative prefix.  That seems like a possibility worth
exploring.  Thanks. 

> One wrinkle to consider is that human made packages often have scripts to
> run before and after both install and uninstall.  I suspect it's going to be
> hard to do this in a package-manager independent way.

Probably.  As I say, I'm just beginning with automake and libtool, and at
present simply trying to find some toeholds for this auto-package idea. 
The alternative prefix looks worthwhile, even if the pre/post scripts
require later adjustments. 

Thanks again.

-- 

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