Recursive directory Installation

[Jeremiah Benham]

I want to recursively install everything that exists within a directory.
I originally had it as this in an install hook in Makefile.am:

install-data-hook:
 cp -R directory

I don't know if the above will work with various packaging like dpkg or
rpm. 
I don't know what the most standard way to go about this. I began
writing a script to generate recursively create Makefile.am in each
subdirectory. Is there a more standard way of doing this. I read through
the docs several times and am not sure which direction to take. 

Jeremiah