looking for comments on this installation program

[Zack Weinberg]

On 16 May 1998 20:42:02 +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
>>>>>> Zack Weinberg writes:
>
>Zack> I wrote a program while I was on vacation which is intended to be the
>Zack> back end of a new installation mechanism for libc.  It performs the
>Zack> function of `install-sh' but should be faster and more flexible: it's
>Zack> written in C and can install many files in one run according to a
>Zack> script.  This should, for example, fix the reported problem that you
>Zack> can't install 2.1 over 2.0 because the 2.0 dynamic linker is replaced
>Zack> before the 2.1 libc.so and libdl.so are in place.
>
>I consider to generate during make install a file which contains a
>rule for every library instead of installing the library.  The final
>step would be to call your installation program with the just build
>file as command file to install the libraries.  Do you think this
>would work?

This is precisely what I had in mind.  In fact I was going to pull most of
the installation code out of the Makefiles; instead, each subdir that wants
to install things would have a short `Instfile' listing all the files to
install.  make install would then glom all the files together, substitute
the prefix and install_root, and call my program.

>Is your program ready for use or do you know of bugs in it?  Do you
>have a newer version than the one you send three months ago?

I've been too busy to test it properly.  I have a newer version, but it
still needs work (see what I said to Roland)

>I don't think I'll manage this on my own and therefore will definitly
>ask for some help (especially for the Makefiles).  But I'm trying to
>get this started.

If you can take a perl script I send you and rewrite it in C that would be a
big help :)

zw