Re: Mac OS X: mkinstalldirs

[Michael Witten]

On 19 May 2008, at 1:07 PM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

> Hello Michael,
>
> * Michael Witten wrote on Sun, May 18, 2008 at 05:59:26AM CEST:
> > The mkinstalldirs script does not work on Mac OS X (Leopard);
> >
> > Mac OS X's mkdir does not have --version and it seems to be
> > thread-safe.
>
> Unfortunately, the AC_PROG_MKDIR_P macro from Autoconf is not
> sharp in its test, in the sense that it may choose 'install-sh -d'
> (or mkinstalldirs, with older Autoconf/Automake versions), even
> if the system's mkdir accepts -p and is parallel-safe.
> ...
> That said, this issue is not a bug in the sense that it causes wrong
> behavior: $MKDIR_P should be functional anyway, just more slowly than
> would be needed on the particular system.  You can work around it with
>  ./configure MKDIR_P="/usr/bin/mkdir -p"

In my case, mkinstalldirs did produce errors, as the subdirectories that
it was trying to make already existed (which is particularly strange,
because it seems like the point of mkinstalldirs is to implement
mkdir -p safely).

I recall from a quick glance at the innards that the script was  
incorrectly
deciding that Mac OS X doesn't have a viable 'mkdir -p', because the
'--version' tests fail, as Mac OS X's mkdir doesn't support a --version
flag; consequently, the for loop that implements a 'mkdir -p' is run,   
but
that loop fails, becausr mkdir complains about subdirectories already  
existing
(at least with one project I was trying to build). I don't really  
understand
why this would be the case, because there seemed to be a check there for
whether the path component exists; perhaps this code is not thread- 
safe either.

In any case, I don't really know how all the machinery works. I suppose
I'll read about it presently.

Thanks,
Michael Witten