Hi Brian, Russ, * Russ Allbery wrote on Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 09:10:52AM CEST: > Brian Gough writes: > > > Maybe it would be good to have a check for problems with install-sh. > > I can see a couple of ways this could be done: > > > - make distcheck could (i) use install-sh and (ii) independently > > check that all files which are supposed to be installed actually > > do get installed. > > The various supporting files that Automake includes in the distribution > package, including install-sh, do all generally have version numbers in > some form. Maybe distcheck should just directly check that the included > files have sufficiently recent versions? I know that version checks > normally go against the philosophy of the Autotools, but in this case > they're files shipped by Automake itself, and it might be the easiest > path.
True. However, I remember at least once seeing packages where the author intentionally replaced the install-sh script for some reason. I don't want to call that unsupported outright, because after all, the script might just be buggy. I think we can expect the replacement to have all desired functionality though. Checking at AC_PROG_INSTALL time seems interesting; but what about the GNU/Linux-only package that has replaced install-sh with an empty file "because our kernel module doesn't ever run elsewhere"? (We can decide to require them to fix their package; but that's a NEWS-worthy change.) Checking the script only on systems where it will be used is feasible, but won't gain you much confidence while testing on other systems. Cheers, Ralf
