Re: Mac OS X: mkinstalldirs

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Michael,

* Michael Witten wrote on Sun, May 18, 2008 at 05:59:26AM CEST:
> The mkinstalldirs script does not work on Mac OS X (Leopard);
>
> Mac OS X's mkdir does not have --version and it seems to be
> thread-safe.

Unfortunately, the AC_PROG_MKDIR_P macro from Autoconf is not
sharp in its test, in the sense that it may choose 'install-sh -d'
(or mkinstalldirs, with older Autoconf/Automake versions), even
if the system's mkdir accepts -p and is parallel-safe.

One problem here is that there is no simple feature test to ensure
parallel execution safety.  We could somehow decide based on $host
but that would require us to pull in AC_CANONICAL_HOST which is at
least a bit ugly, and also a maintenance hassle.

That said, this issue is not a bug in the sense that it causes wrong
behavior: $MKDIR_P should be functional anyway, just more slowly than
would be needed on the particular system.  You can work around it with
  ./configure MKDIR_P="/usr/bin/mkdir -p"

or you could initialize $ac_cv_path_mkdir appropriately in your
config.site file.  (These comments apply to the latest stable Autoconf
and Automake.)

Still, since this has come up before, I assume a patch to improve
things here (plus somebody volunteering to keep the list up to date?)
would be appreciated.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf