Re: incremental make install

[Bob Rossi]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 11:51:56AM -0500, Peter Johansson wrote:
> Warren Young wrote:
>> Bob Rossi wrote:
>>>
>>> I was wondering if there is an incremental make install command? (my  
>>> make install doesn't appear to be incremental, should it be?)
>>
>> No, a Makefile's install target normally just contains a series of  
>> commands for installing everything, without checking if it exists  
>> first.    If the install target depends on anything, it's usually  
>> basic top-level targets like 'all'.  There's no technology limit that  
>> prevents us from making it incremental.  All you'd have to do is write  
>> a rule for every file that gets installed, and make the install target  
>> depend on all of them.  Tedious to do by hand, but automake is good at  
>> doing such things for you.
>>
> There is an item in the not yet released Automake NEWS that I guess is  
> related to this:
>
> - install-sh supports -C, which does not update the installed file
>   (and its time stamps) if the contents did not change.
>
> http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=automake.git;a=blob;f=NEWS;h=6fcc1a535b0bbab7333230d780fde8f194836131;hb=HEAD

O, very nice. I think I'll beta test that for you guys. Do you happen
to know how a user could get that feature working off the top of your
head?

make install -C ?

If not, I'll have to play around with it.

Thanks,
Bob Rossi