coreutils-5.0 -- 'make install-strip' badly fails

[Peter Breitenlohner]

I want to report a rather severe bug as well as another problem
in the coreutils-5.0 install procedure.

1. 'make install-strip' very badly fails.
Why? 'install-strip' uses the install-sh script to install and strip the
binaries. The script first installs the new binary under a temporary name
and then renames or removes the old binary. Finally the script uses 'mv' to
rename the new binary, but for 'mv' itself to be installed this cannot
possibly work.

As a consequence the install process aborts and one is left whithout any
'mv' binary (there is actually still one in the build tree), an extremely
undesirable result.

Please fix as soon as possible!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. coreutils want to install 'hostname' and 'kill', but (on GNU/Linux
systems) there is another hostname (from net-tools-1.60) and another kill
(from either procps-3.1.8 or util-linux-2.11z).

The situation isn't too bad for kill because most of the time the shell
builtin will be used, but the case of hostname is serious, because there are
symlinks 'domainname', 'dnsdomainname', 'nisdomainname', and 'ypdomainname'
all pointing to 'hostname'. These symlinks certainly don't work with the
hostname from coreutils.

I first tried to remove 'hostname' and 'kill' from src/Makefile.am (and
src/Makefile.in) as well as 'hostname.1' from doc/Makefile.{am,in}, but then
'make check' failed (in the target check-README).

Anyway, having to modify Makefile.am is certainly not the right way to
achieve such things.

Both procps-3.1.8 and util-linux-2.11z provide means to skip the
installation of 'kill' (as well as some others for util-linux) via a command
line argument for make.

I would like to suggest, that you too provide a means to skip the installation
of some (a few) of the executables -- preferably such that the installation
of the corresponding manpages is automatically skipped as well -- either by
some configure option(s) or by a suitable make variable that can be specified
on the commandline. What I have in mind is something like
        make NOINST='kill hostname' install
or analogous.

For the moment I had to use an unpleasant workaround: first saving the old
hostname, kill, and hostname.1, then installing coreutils, and finally
restoring the old files. I am sure you too are disgusted by the necessity to
do such things.

regards
Peter Breitenlohner <address@hidden>