Re: improved Automake test for file names with funny characters

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 01:56:35PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Here's a fix for that problem.  The basic idea is to drop the use
> of IFS, except on ancient platforms that don't support mkdir -p.

Automake doesn't use non-GNU mkdir -p; it says that Solaris' mkdir -p
is not thread safe.  See automake/m4/mkdirp.m4

That file also says that "mkdir -p -- ." might fail if current directory
is not writable.  The original bug report was:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2004-07/msg00052.html
(It speaks about a setu where root cannot write to a NFS share.)

On my GNU/Linux, "cd / && mkdir -p ." succeeds, under normal user.
It would be nice to know which platform has this behaviour.

> ... drop the use of IFS, except on ...

But there are still situations where IFS is used and the wildcard expansion
hits.  Perhaps my tiny patch should be also applied, after Paul's big
patch is resolved.

> By the way, I notice that we're now using install-sh even when GNU
> install is available.  Is there a reason for that?

"install-sh -d" (without any dirname) works, while "install -d" complains.

But perhaps Automake should use GNU install in other cases.

But at least for $(mkinstalldirs) you need "install-sh -d", not
"install -d".  (See automake.in for the definition of $(mkinstalldirs).)

Or perhaps
        mkinstalldirs = install -d .
would do the trick.  Unless it has the same problems as "mkdir -p .", see
above.

Have a nice day,
        Stepan