Add redirection to "install" for package managers

[David A. Wheeler]

I'd like to add a simple redirection capability to "install" to make 
package creation easier.  Any objections/comments?  Here's some 
background...

Many end-users today use "package managers" to install programs. 
Package managers for formats like .deb (Debian, Ubuntu, ...) and RPM 
(Fedora, SuSE, ...) require that programs install their files in an 
intermediate directory.  This is easy if the "make install" routine 
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.

My use case is simple - a makefile might contain this sort of stuff:
install:
  install myprogram /usr/bin

I want to be able to:
 export REDIR_DESTDIR=/tmp/stuff/
 make install

and then have "myprogram" installed in /tmp/stuff/usr/bin/myprogram
(where directory /tmp/stuff/usr/bin was automatically created).  In 
fact, I'd like to make it so package managers can simply default to 
ALWAYS setting that environment variable, so that "naive" packagers 
simply get files put in the right place (this is possible by simply not 
adding the prefix if it's already added.)

It's possible to do similar things with chroot and so on, but they're 
all painful; details here:
  http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/automating-destdir.html .

At the very least, it seems that "install" should be able to be told 
where to install stuff, without requiring complicated contortions.

--- David A. Wheeler