Re: how to detect broken install-sh?

[Robert Collins]

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Brian Gough wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to hear thoughts about the best way to detect a broken install-sh.
..
> Maybe it would be good to have a check for problems with install-sh.

I think that is a waste of cycles for every project except Automake :).

> I can see a couple of ways this could be done:
> 
>   - AC_PROG_INSTALL could confirm that the install program it finds
>     works in the way it will be used in "make install" and give an
>     error otherwise.

Perhaps it already does for the system install, if so extending that to
the bundled one isn't a great stretch.

> What would be the best way?  Do you think this might cause other
> problems?

I suggest dropping install-sh completely except for the coreutils
package. coreutils is very portable, so its not unreasonable to require
that it is installed to locally build and install other packages.
coreutils of course cannot depend on itself being installed. A more
conservative fix would be to keep install-sh for the transitive closure
of coreutils build dependencies (but given that one can cross compile I
think this is also unnecessary).

- -Rob
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