LYNX-DEV Lynx installation problem

[Scott McGee (Personal)]

Hi all,

Since the dev team uses my box for development and testing, I haven't compiled
a copy of the dev code for some time. This past week, we have been installing
another Solaris (2.5.1) box for a web server for our distance learning people,
and I thought I should test the 102 release there. I unpacked the files, ran
configure, and make. So far, all OK. Then I ran make install and things fell
flat on their face!

It seams that configure determined that /usr/sbin/install should be used for
installing software, but failed to account for the way this version works. I
can't seem to see another version either.

Basically, make install does the following:

  /usr/sbin/install -s -m 755 lynx /usr/local/bin/lynx

but man install says that if given the final arguement, it should be a
directory and not a file name, and is used to search for an existing file to
install over. If none is found, install failes. I finally determined that the
expected command should be:

  /usr/sbin/install -s -m 755 -f /usr/local/bin lynx /usr/local/bin/

where the -f /usr/local/bin tells it to force installation there. Actually,
the final /usr/local/bin is not needed, so it could be shortened to:

  /usr/sbin/install -s -m 755 -f /usr/local/bin lynx

Now, the question arises, why is the install on this system so out of tune
with the expectations of the makefile and configure? If this problem is
common to Solaris 2.5.1, then such systems would not be able to install lynx
using the makefile. Not a good thing!

What can I do to help track down the cause of this problem?

Scott

Scott McGee: Salt Lake Community College Webmaster | When in danger,
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Email: address@hidden (Scott McGee)         | run in circles,
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