Re: Software/HD ecology

[Fredrik Staxeng <fstx+u@update.uu.se>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

>Fredrik Staxeng <fstx+u@update.uu.se> writes:
>> Perhaps I have not made the mechanism clear. The idea was the makefile
>> calls "gnu-install package version file dest", instead of install.sh
>> or BSD install. This is a simple extension of what is already done
>> today.
>
>No, it's completely obvious what you meant; it's just that you're
>over-specifying.  Such implementation details are up to the package
>maintainers.

My proposal is for an external facility, and that packages check for
it and use it if available. I think that the main feature of the 
proposal is that it places minimal burden on the package maintainers.

I think that requiring working uninstall targets places a bigger burden
on package maintainers.

>From the gcc-3.2 Makefile:

uninstall:
        @echo "the uninstall target is not supported in this tree"

>Similarly, the coding standards _don't_ say `you should use autoconf to
>make a configure script' (even though that's certainly one of the best
>ways to do it, and how it's almost always done), they just say `you
>should have a configure script.'

Autoconf is one of those things that only get reinvented by people
who don't understand how much work went into making it in the first
place. I would go a bit further than saying that it is the best way,
I think its the only reasonable way. I think the coding standards
could recommend autoconf a bit more strongly that they do today.

There is nothing in my proposal that requires autoconf. It merely
makes it easier to implement support for it. 

>> I would like to be able to force packages to use a tool that I trust. 
>> If it is easy enough to do, I would implement support for it and send
>> patches to the maintainer.
>
>If you personally don't want to trust anything that doesn't use a
>`gnu-install' script, you're free to only use packages that do.

I always do "make -n install" to see what the package wants to install.
Partly because of curiosity, I want to know where it puts things, 
and what those things are. But of course, there is the suspicion
that it might do something bad. It has happened in the past, it will
happen again. (This does not imply malice on any part, of course)

-- 
Fredrik Stax\"ang | rot13: sfgk@hcqngr.hh.fr