Re: AC_PROG_INSTALL does not trigger install-sh availability

[Eric Blake]

On 09/15/2010 01:05 PM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> This long-standing issue is (related to) PR automake/546 in
> http://sourceware.org/cgi-bin/gnatsweb.pl?database=automake
>
> The issues with letting plain 'automake --add-missing' do the job
> without AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE present is that we actually have less
> information available as to what files are needed (but we can guess
> good enough probably), and that we lose a bit of typo error detection.
>
> So my latest thinking on this was to maybe add an --no-am switch to

Just so I'm clear, your suggesting 'automake --no-am', and not 
'autoreconf --no-am', right?

> explicitly allow copying without requiring AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE.
> autoreconf could then use that.  WDYT?  Overkill?

Well, autoreconf could indeed be taught to use that, but it would have 
to first probe for a new enough automake, and that could take some time.

Also, it's always bugged me that the check for install-sh is a 
configure-time test rather than an m4-time test, meaning that it doesn't 
fail until 'make distcheck'.  Maybe it would be nice after all to teach 
autoconf how to check at m4-time, and even supply the file automatically 
given the right command-line argument, without having to rely on 
automake.  At any rate, I don't think anything is going to change on 
this front in time for releasing 2.68.

--
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org