* Robert Collins wrote on Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 01:13:48PM CEST: > Ralf Wildenhues wrote: > What would be the best way? Do you think this might cause other > >>> problems? > >> I suggest dropping install-sh completely except for the coreutils > >> package. > > > > Expecting GNU coreutils to be installed on each system is unreasonable. > > Other systems have quite well-functioning tools, too. Autotools > > generally strive to produce packages that work well on all kinds of > > Posix and almost-Posix systems.
> So I don't expect coreutils to be installed; I'm saying *packages other > than coreutils* should *depend on a working /usr/bin/install*. > > Thats quite a different thing :) Right; and sorry for mixing that up. However, I still consider that unreasonable. install-sh is selected on several systems, including, if I remember correctly, AIX, IRIX, Tru64, and Solaris (my access to these systems is down ATM). None of these can be expected to fix their /usr/bin/install any time soon, esp. since install is not standardized in any way. Also, some systems are known to use an old version of the install-sh script as install program, which doesn't support multi-file install. Contrast that with us supplying a replacement script: that's easy, rather lightweight in additional file size, maybe not in execution time on systems where install-sh is selected. I still don't see any valid reason to drop install-sh completely, esp. not since the original bug report wasn't about our install-sh, but only an old version of it. Cheers, Ralf
