Re: [HACKERS] Proposed autoconf change: rip out search for 'install'

"Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu> writes:
> Anyway, Tom, do you think that the AC_PROG_INSTALL function might help
> on the HP? If so, we've probably stressed it pretty good...

AC_PROG_INSTALL would solve the problem on HP --- one of the ad hoc
tests that it uses is to ignore /etc/install and /usr/sbin/install,
which are the two places that that program might live on HP. (BTW,
AC_PROG_INSTALL's comments refer to this as SysV install, so I think
you are being unfairly hard on HP to blame them for the lack of
compatibility. They *are* being compatible ... with SysV. And
normal users don't put either of those directories into PATH.)

I don't *know* of any cases where AC_PROG_INSTALL would fail, and
certainly it's pretty widely used. I'm just being paranoid because
it has no way to directly test what the install program really does ---
it is using a bunch of ad-hoc rules to guess whether a program it finds
is likely to be BSD-compatible or not. That's not my idea of how a
reliable autoconfiguration test ought to work.

regards, tom lane