./configure command

[Paul Howarth]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 14:03 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Paul Howarth wrote:
> 
> > Michael Hennebry wrote:
> > > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > >
> > >> On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 21:22 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> > >>> One does not have to become root.
> > >>> If one does want the software
> > >>> installed as system software,
> > >>> do some testing first.
> > >>> Edit Makefile,
> > >>> removing any .SILENT targets.
> > >>> As an ordinary user,
> > >>> make -n prefix=/opt 'CP=cp -i' install 2>&1 | tee makeno.out
> > >> Same as above. This won't work in most cases.
> > >
> > > In this case, I'm not sure what "won't work" means.
> > > Do you mean that it won't give one a good idea whether
> > > something one doesn't want clobbered will get clobbered?
> >
> > Possibly. A large proportion of projects use "install" rather than "cp"
> > in their Makefile "install" targets.
> 
> Is there a reason that the install commands wouldn't show up in
> the output or that they would be performed despite the -n flag?
> The 'CP=cp -i' would obviously be useless.

It was the 'CP=cp -i' that I was referring to. The "-n" should indeed
prevent any commands from actually being run. However, the volume of
output you get from an autotools-generated Makefile with "-n" would make
it easy to miss something important, particularly given that some of the
output could include complex if/then type arrangements.

Paul.