Re: Do not create conditional installation directories

[Allan Caffee]

On Sun, 15 Mar 2009, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * Ralf Wildenhues wrote on Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:43:03AM CET:
> > I have a patch to let 'make install' not create installation directories
> > in which no files will end up.  This half-fixes a long-standing TODO
> > item; so far, one had to work around this with conditionals and hacks in
> > order to achieve it.
> > 
> > However, there is a downside: this patch does not fix the TODO item for
> > the 'installdirs' target (yet).  Do you still think it's worthwhile to
> > have, and ok if we leave installdirs to be fixed in a later version?
> 
> There is another downside: up to now, one could use something like
>   foo_DATA =
> 
> to let $(DESTDIR)$(foodir) be created at installation time.  This of
> course no longer works, and as such is a backward incompatibility.

Was this ever a documented feature?

> The patch is still missing a documentation update.  I suppose we need to
> document an alternative.

I'm not sure where this would go but perhaps something like:

[-----snip-----]
In previous versions of Automake an empty data directory could be created
during installation simply by specifying an empty DATA primary like:

@example
foo_DATA =
@end example

Newer versions of Automake do not implicitly create empty installation
directories.  Behavior identical to the above may be achieved by using
@code{install-data-hook} to create the directory.

@example
install-data-hook:
        $(mkdir_p) $(DESTDIR)$(foodir)
@end example
[-----snap-----]

I wasn't actually sure whether this should use install-data-hook or
install-data-local.

~Allan