OS-sympathetic installation (fwd)

[David Lee]

About a month ago there was some discussion on the automake list about the
possibility of supplementing "make install" with something along the lines
of a "make pkg":  the aim being to be able to produce a OS-type package
(RPM, Solaris pkg, etc.)  for subsequent installation.  (A copy of the
initial message is below.) 

Whilst, I must confess, there was no vast outburst of wild enthusiasm nor
massed cries of "Eureka!", there seemed to be acceptance of the principle
subject, of course, to someone actually doing it.

But any such project would, I think, have a "libtool" interaction, and I
know almost nothing about the insides of libtool.  It would seem to
require a variant of "libtool --mode=install" that doesn't actually do the
install/cp/chmod commands, but instead could produce information (or a
file?) listing sources destinations, permissions, etc. (which could then 
be used to build the OS-native package definition).

That, in very high-level, waffly, hand-waving terms, is the general idea. 
Any thoughts?  (Is the functionality already there and I missed it?)  You
may safely assume that I am floundering here, and trying to get a toehold
to see whether such a thing is possible or feasible. 

-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Systems Programmer                       Computer Centre       :
:                                           University of Durham  :
:  http://www.dur.ac.uk/t.d.lee/            South Road            :
:                                           Durham                :
:  Phone: +44 191 374 2882                  U.K.                  :

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 17:49:57 +0000 (GMT)
From: David Lee <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: OS-sympathetic installation

I'll instantly admit that I have very little experience of automake
(although a reasonable amount of autoconf), so my question may be way
off-beam.  Anyway...

Over the years, the "standardisation" of many packages, GNU and non-GNU,
onto the autoconf mechanism has vastly eased my life as an installer.
>From what I have seen so far of automake, this also looks to be hugely
advantageous to the typical end-user (even if the end-user never directly
sees the workings of autoconf and automake).

But there seems to be one vital missing component.  Way back in the olden
days, we needed "make install" to put the product into its final
location(s).  But these days, many operating systems have their own
package-management mechanisms (the word "package" is here overloaded!). 
My own experience is with the Solaris pkgadd/pkgrm family of commands, but
other Oses have other things such as "RPM" etc.

For such systems, the traditional "make install" is not ideal.  What would
be much better is something like "make OS-pkg" (needs a far better name) 
which would simply try to construct one or more RPM-like entities.  We
would then use the OS's own package-manager (RPM, Solaris pkgadd, etc.) to
install (and deinstall) these entities.

To those of installing, and maintaining, (and sometimes contributing to),
software from many different sources onto large numbers of machines with
different operating systems, the ability to use the OS's native
package-management (instead of "make install") could be most beneficial.

Has any thought been given to this idea?

(There is a tiny, unindexed, incidental mention of this possibility tucked
away on page 161 of the New Riders book "GNU autoconf, automake and
libtool", (good book, by the way!) but otherwise I haven't seen anything.
Have I missed it? Is this idea totally somehow (how?) fundamentally
flawed?)


-- 

:  David Lee                                I.T. Service          :
:  Systems Programmer                       Computer Centre       :
:                                           University of Durham  :
:  http://www.dur.ac.uk/t.d.lee/            South Road            :
:                                           Durham                :
:  Phone: +44 191 374 2882                  U.K.                  :