Re: how to detect broken install-sh?

[Russ Allbery]

Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:

> True.  However, I remember at least once seeing packages where the
> author intentionally replaced the install-sh script for some reason.
> I don't want to call that unsupported outright, because after all, the
> script might just be buggy.  I think we can expect the replacement to
> have all desired functionality though.

> Checking at AC_PROG_INSTALL time seems interesting; but what about the
> GNU/Linux-only package that has replaced install-sh with an empty file
> "because our kernel module doesn't ever run elsewhere"?  (We can decide
> to require them to fix their package; but that's a NEWS-worthy change.)
> Checking the script only on systems where it will be used is feasible,
> but won't gain you much confidence while testing on other systems.

The conservative approach would be to add a new Automake option that says
to check all the versions of scripts included in the package at make dist
time and not default it to on.

The less conservative approach would be to check the scripts at make dist
time by default but add an option similar to foreign that lets people turn
that check off if they're intentionally replacing or zeroing things.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>