On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 10:38:17AM -0400, Chet Ramey wrote: > The business of installing the loadables and > headers on `make install' came later as the result of feature requests. >
And Duncan, correctly, replied: >Fine for `make install' to *install* them. But it flies in the face of >convention for `make install' to *build* them - `make' should do that. >Cheers ... Duncan. I totally agree. In fact, what would be ideal is: 1) The default target is "make all", which makes everything (as the name implies). (but doesn't install it) (*) 2) To make (just) the loadables, you would do: make loadables 3) To make (just) bash itself, you would do: make bash 4) And, of course, to install it all, you would do: make install (*) I've always found the fact that "make" doesn't make the loadables weird (to say the very least). Comments: 1) I think the fact that (plain) "make" does not build the loadables probably does account for the fact that most (all except Slackware, apparently) distros don't include them. The people who run the distros are, after all, only human. 2) This is, of course, mostly much ado about very little. It is unlikely to get changed at this late date. As Arnold would say, it is way too late in the game.
