Re: Add redirection to "install" for package managers

[Bob Proulx]

David A. Wheeler wrote:
> supports DESTDIR, but a vast number of programs don't support DESTDIR. 
> It's not hard to add, but it's annoying to have to keep doing it again & 
> again... especially when it's the only thing that has to be done "by hand".
> 
> Instead of fixing each program, one by one forever, I'd rather automate 
> it once.  At the least, the "install" program should be able to redirect 
> to another directory, sort-of-like a built-in DESTDIR instead of having 
> to rewrite everyone's makefile.
>...
>   http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/automating-destdir.html .

In my mind making hacks like this to install, mv, cp, ln, etc. is very
similar to your argument number five in your essage about variants of
basic commands and a special PATH.  That actually seems like the best
approach if the Makefile isn't going to support DESTDIR.  It is the
first workaround that crossed my mind.  Because then it works on a
standard system.  Note also that hacking install, mv, cp, ln doesn't
help when shell redirection (e.g. > tofile) is used.

It also doesn't help when other commands (e.g. rsync) is used.  Adding
the proposed hack would be creating a one-off scheme that isn't going
to be supported in all of the myriad of other random programs that
exist.  I think that by itself is enough to make me not like the hack.
It just doesn't feel like the right direction to go to me.

Of course the best approach is just to support DESTDIR fully in the
Makefile.  Then it is easily supported in the package build
environments for debs and rpms and others because then it looks like
all of the other normal modern projects.

BTW... In my experience many projects that don't support DESTDIR do
support PREFIX.  This isn't as nice but has often been used
effectively in package building.  Mostly those have been cleaned up as
projects have added full support for DESTDIR.  But you might try
looking at setting PREFIX instead if you are battling a DESTDIR
problem.

Bob