Re: [Bug-gsl] GSL installation bug

[Peter Johansson]

Hello Sasha,

please keep bug-gsl in cc (especially since I'm just a user and not the 
maintainer)

Alexander Belikoff wrote:
> Hello Peter - thanks for the quick response. Cannot check right now, 
> will do tomorrow morning. GSL itself was downloaded as a .tgz package 
> from GNU FTP server (version 1.13). What install-sh does, is the 
> following: the moment it finds a non-option argument it assigns it to 
> *src* variable. Next time it finds a non-option argument, given that 
> *$src* is non-empty, it assigns it to *dst*. As a result, after 
> processing the command-line arguments, *$src* is the first non-option 
> arg, and *$dst* is the last one with everything in between ignored.
I downloaded the latest gsl (1.13) and indeed the behavior of install-sh 
is sub-optimal. When I previously claimed that install-sh worked as 
expected for me that was based on an install-sh that comes with automake 
1.11 (script version 2009-04-28.21). That version of install-sh differs 
significantly from the one in gsl 1.13. It seems like the install-sh has 
not been updated when the maintainer has updated his automake. The 
Makefile.ins that come in gsl 1.13 are created by automake 1.11 but 
install-sh is probably an older version. In order to update install-sh 
(and friends) one needs to (as a maintainer) call automake with the 
--force switch. I noticed that the autogen.sh script in the git 
repository calls automake without the --force switch, which might 
explain why the files have never been updated.

> I've fixed it for my installation by lifting install-sh from another 
> package and putting it in place of the one in GSL.
Seems like a good workaround.
> Anyway, I'll provide more info tomorrow...

Cheers,
Peter