On Wed, 13 Dec 2000, Michael Gerdts wrote: > A good point is brought up at http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards.html#SEC50 > > It is a good idea to avoid creating symbolic links in makefiles, since a > few systems don't support them. > [...] > I have seen many packages that include their own scripts that use very > basic functionality to mimic the more advanced functionality of tools that > are available in some OSes. For example, install.sh usually mimics the > behavior of BSD's install, and mkdirheir commonly is able to help those > systems that are missing "mkdir -p". I would recommend that Linux-PAM include and use things like "install.sh", "config.sub" and "config.guess" that are widely used in the autoconf way of doing things. Also that we follow the GNU recommendations for being able to build in directory subtrees separate from the source tree. (Am I a lone voice in the wilderness on this?) 1. It is of immense benefit to sites with multiple machine architectures (as distinct from the commonly shared Microsoft/Linux "We are the World" way of thinking!). 2. The end-user has a clean source tree at all times. 3. For developers, subtle features in make procedures (as in the earlier discussion about "test -{e,r,f,L}") can become clearer. > As for the particular case here, why do we want to do an > "ln -sf security ."? That looks like a bandaid for something that moved in > a previous release. That is the feeling I get too. Better would be to avoid the "ln -s ..." altogether. If there is a problem, let's fix it properly. 1. Can we agree in principle? 2. Subject to the above, any volunteers? (I could take a first attempt if no-one else fancies it.) (And if we have to stick with this "ln -s ..." (though I hope we don't) do we really need the "-f" flag, if it is non-portable? What benefit does it give to the end-user or even to active contributors like us?) Hope that helps. -- : 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. :
