Re: Faster install-sh in C

On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 07:50:23PM +0100, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > Well, apparently everyone says the system install is not portable and
> > the discussion stops there.
>
> Well, who actually says that? I know that I was the one who actually
> coded up the current avoid-system-install-at-all-cost behavior, but
> only because we were too annoyed at the time to do more research. Now,
> as long as someone's spending time on it, it may be worth investigating
> what is wrong and provide an explanation for the benefit of the entire
> autotools-using community.

Well, the problem with this approach is that while I did have time to
write the C replacement, I didn't (and still don't) have access to a lot
of systems in order to check what the differences between the install
programs are.

Also, keep in my that this C install program has the extra feature of
being able to install multiple files on one invocation, per suggestion
from Tom Lane. This allows us to save the nested for-loop in
src/include/Makefile. GNU install (available on my system) also has
this capability, but would we be able to use the trick if we had to
cater for the lowest common denominator found on other, non-GNU-enabled
systems?

--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[(at)]dcc(dot)uchile(dot)cl>)
"Llegará una época en la que una investigación diligente y prolongada sacará
a la luz cosas que hoy están ocultas" (Séneca, siglo I)