Re: How to install additional files in "make install"

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Ralf Corsepius wrote on Fri, Sep 21, 2007 at 06:57:04PM CEST:
> On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 16:10 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > > * Ralf Corsepius wrote on Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 09:46:12AM CEST:
[...]
> > > > | Makefile.am:1: `libdir' is not a legitimate directory for `DATA'
[...]
> > I agree that there should be a straightforward way to put files there.
> > But it is right about complaining about the above line,
> I disagree. *_DATA should take arbitrary data, no matter what it is and
> let the user do with it whatever he wants.

But it's exactly the use case that the original pointer desired, that
can break in unexpected ways: if you install a library with wrong
permissions, it's not usable on some systems until the permissions are
finally fixed.  But between the time the library is copied and
install-data-hook is executed, some program may need this new library,
for example one of the programs that 'make' executes as part of the
installation process.

A similar issue has been observed before, IIRC with the gettext package:
`libtool --mode=install' used `rm -f && ln -s' rather than first trying
`ln -sf' for creation of library symlinks; but the `ln' binary happened
to depend on the library that was being installed, so installation
failed.

> IMO, automake is outsmarting itself, here.

It's preventing users from unobvious bugs.

> > Ultimately, I guess another primary, or a prefix to _LIBRARIES or so,
> > should be created to allow this sort of thing.
> I don't think this would be wise.

Do you have a reason for this?

Cheers,
Ralf