Re: Add redirection to "install" for package managers

[David A. Wheeler]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    I hope so. I'll creating that package, including a script named
>    "install", and see if I don't need to patch GNU install.  That'll
>    work for many cases.  (I plan to use the environment variable is
>    REDIR_DESTDIR.)
>
>    If it works EXCEPT that too many people invoke /usr/bin/install
>    directly, then I'll gen up a modification of GNU install to do it,
>    and return to this mailing list to pitch for it.
>
> Just replacing install will not fix things, for example if a Makefile
> invokes ln, cp, mv, install-info, or just pipes stuff, then your
> scheme will not work at all.

I intend to wrap a few of the most common programs such as "cp" and 
"ln".  Piping will work fine, as long as it pipes to a program that 
invokes them without a "/" prefix.

...

> It is also not reversible, `make uninstall DESTDIR=/foo' will not
> work; and thus removing things in the wrong place in the worst case.

Not relevant for my needs.  I'm trying to (easily) create .rpm and .deb 
packages, not actually installing the programs directly. Once I create 
the rpm/deb file, I intend to erase the entire DESTDIR subdirectory 
anyway.  The rpm/deb packages would then be installed and uninstalled. 
If it _was_ relevant, I could wrap rm and rmdir.

> There is really only one correct solution to the problem, and that is
> DESTDIR.  Intercepting file-system calls does not work, since it is
> very OS specific, so it is not portable, nor will it work in all
> cases.

You can always add DESTDIR support to the install script; nothing I do 
will eliminate that approach.  Indeed, I expect that there will cases 
that continue to need it.

But lots of software's install scripts essentially boil down to running 
"install", "cp", "mkdir", and "ln" to deal with directories like 
/usr/bin and /usr/lib... so I just want to automate a common case.

--- David A. Wheeler