Re: Depending on system install scripts (was Re: [BUGS] COBOL) (fwd)

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Eisentraut <address@hidden> writes:

Peter> Hi, this came up in our project.  Why, if a package is required
Peter> to ship install-sh anyway, do we look for a system install
Peter> program when this might just cause weird problems?  (And you
Peter> know that many system's 'install' programs are just full of
Peter> weird problems.)  Compare this to the case of mkinstalldirs: we
Peter> don't check for mkdir -p either before reverting to the script
Peter> solution.  Is the install-sh case just a performance issue?

Yes, it is.

The point being we are *falling* back to our version of the tools, but
we always try to use what's available on the system.  This is why we
don't impose GNU fnmatch.c, regex.c, strftime.c etc.  It's almost
ideological, we are here to cure diseases, and sane bodies must not
pay our portability tricks.