install seems to be doing things needlessly (fwd)

[Dag Wieers]

Hi,

This mail was sent to address@hidden about a month ago.

I noticed the following 'strange' behaviour and I was wondering if it was 
a bug or just not important to change.

        address@hidden soapbox-0.1.0]# soapbox -p /var/tmp/soapbox make install
        install -d -m0755 /lib /usr/bin
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib", 0755).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib", 0755).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/usr/bin", 0755).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/usr/bin", 0755).
        install -m0755 libsoapbox.so /lib
        soapbox: Attempt to unlink("/lib/libsoapbox.so").
        soapbox: Attempt to open64("/lib/libsoapbox.so", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT, 
100755).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib/libsoapbox.so", 0600).
        soapbox: Attempt to chown("/lib/libsoapbox.so", -1, -1).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib/libsoapbox.so", 0755).
        install -m0755 soapbox.sh /usr/bin/soapbox
        soapbox: Attempt to unlink("/usr/bin/soapbox").
        soapbox: Attempt to open64("/usr/bin/soapbox", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT, 
100644).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/usr/bin/soapbox", 0600).
        soapbox: Attempt to chown("/usr/bin/soapbox", -1, -1).
        soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/usr/bin/soapbox", 0755).

You'll notice double chmod's (probably the default first and then the 
requested one).


Another problem I frequently have is when doing install -d

        address@hidden soapbox-0.1.0]# soapbox -p /var/tmp/soapbox install -d 
-m0755 /var/tmp/soapbox-1.2.3
        soapbox: Attempt to mkdir("/var", 0755).
        soapbox: Attempt to mkdir("/var/tmp", 0755).

Is this the expected behaviour of install ? Creating directories 
that already exist ?


The reason why I bother, is because in my case these incidents are 
'reported' and since they are unnecesarry I'd rather have an extra stat 
and no systemcalls, instead of unneeded systemcalls that could trigger 
something.

Thank you for taking the time and for your feedback.
--   dag wieers,  address@hidden,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
«Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors»