>> This patch adds support to cpio 2.4.2 for the DESTDIR macro, which
>> according to people on gnu.misc.discuss is the appropriate macro for
>> supporting an installation root.
Alain> It was/is my understanding that automake honoured DESTDIR.
Note that cpio in particular has a sad but (perhaps) interesting
history here.
I was the cpio maintainer for a while. I started writing a pax front
end to it, among other things.
One day I decided to clean up the cpio Makefiles to conform to GNU
standards. This turned out to be relatively painful. So I started
using the original (djm) automake. Then I started extending that
script (back then automake was a /bin/sh script) to do more of what I
needed. I then started talking to my Gnits friends about it, and
extending it to help them, too. One day (at their urging), I rewrote
it in Perl, and the modern automake was born.
Unfortunately cpio got dropped in the meantime. So, the package that
created automake was left without the benefit of using it.
cpio was then given to François for inclusion in the "paxutils" (which
includes tar). From there it migrated to Paul Eggert. These programs
(tar/pax/cpio) are cursed in a way -- it is hard to get a release of
them out. I failed to do it anyway.
Tom
