Re: Do not create conditional installation directories

[Ralf Corsepius]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * 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.
>   
Right, and you are throwing away a _useful_ feature, pushing around users.

> 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?
>   
IMO, there is no bug. There simply is  lack of documentation, 
documenting a behavior some users don't expect, they could easily 
work-around inside of their Makefile.am, which rarely has caused 
mal-functions.

What you are doing now is _breaking_ what used to work == regression.

Ralf