Re: looking for comments on this installation program

[Roland McGrath <roland@frob.com>]

It seems a little dubious to me writing a program to do this for the libc
install.  That is what the package installation programs exist to do, and
if they don't do it right they should be made to.

The file you talk about generating during make install is mostly already
there, in distinfo.  The (unfinished) rpm/Makefile stuff uses this to put
together the rpm specs.  

All we need is for that info to be a little more structured and list where
in the build tree the installed files come from as well as where they go.

Then the information is readily accessible for a variety of different
installation means to do the right thing in an automated way.  For rpm, you
just need to install all those files in a `buildroot' directory and then it
will pack up the rpm from there.  I haven't used debian or other package
systems, but I imagine they're similar.  It would be nice if such package
tools were enhanced so instead of just using a list of files, they could
take our installation-info data file and "install" files directly from the
build locations into a new package file under their installed names.

I guess if we go this direction, it can be a pretty straightforward program
to just read this text file and do the installation, so we can include such
a program (if Zack wants to write one) that hackers can use to install libc
if they don't want to use a package system.