Re: Do not create conditional installation directories

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Ralf Corsepius wrote on Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 12:08:44PM CET:
> Allan Caffee wrote:
>> On Sun, 15 Mar 2009, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>>> 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?

No as far as I know.

> I don't recall, but I know it is widely used and therefore will cause  
> silent incompatibilities between the next automake version and its  
> predecessors.
>
> To me personally, it's a severe functional regression.

Well, here we have an item where one's bug is another person's feature.

BTW, a 'make distcheck' or a 'make install' into a fresh prefix should
be able to uncover this incompatibility, so while it is silent, it is
not the most silent thing there is.

But the question remains: how do you think we should address the bug
that bothers Akim, other than by this patch and a big warning in NEWS?

Thanks,
Ralf