install-sh defect?

[John Calcote]

Hi Eric, (et.al.),

I've run into a possible bug in the Autoconf (2.62, and previous)
package while I've been playing with it lately.

1. The manual indicates in sec 5.2, pg 39, bottom of the page (Feb 08
2.61 version) that autoconf ships with a version of install-sh that
you can use if you wish. I believe this to be an inaccurate statement,
as no install-sh script actually gets installed with the autoconf
package (at least not lately).

2. autoreconf --install is supposed to install missing files, or
rather pass appropriate options to the tools that it runs to install
missing files. This works fine with automake, which supports
--add-missing, but autoconf has no such option to install missing
files (even if it had one to install).

3. If you're setting up an Autoconf-only project (no Automake or
Libtool), and you use the AC_PROG_INSTALL macro, then the configure
script generated by autoconf requires install-sh to exist, but the
Autoconf package it doesn't provide it or a way to install it if it's
missing. Furthermore, since you haven't used the AM initialization
macros in your configure.ac file, autoreconf --install won't even run
automake --add-missing (--copy).

Is this an oversight?

Regards,
John