Re: Use $(MKDIR_P) instead of @MKDIR_P@

[Jim Meyering]

Bruno Haible wrote:

> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>> Still, the standards.texi authors found that additional flexibility so
>> useful that they explicitly document it as required for a set of tools
>> (node: Utilities in Makefiles).
>
> Citing it:
>   Use the following @code{make} variables to run those programs:
>
>   $(AR) $(BISON) $(CC) $(FLEX) $(INSTALL) $(LD) $(LDCONFIG) $(LEX)
>   $(MAKE) $(MAKEINFO) $(RANLIB) $(TEXI2DVI) $(YACC)
>
> Yes, this makes sense for programs for which there are multiple
> alternatives. But "mkdir -p"? How many different versions are there of it?

Some versions of mkdir -p have a race condition
that has actually caused build failures for me (albeit years ago),
and with versions of automake (1.10, I think) that don't detect
that failing, or when no race-free version is found, it *should* be
possible to work around that simply by running make with a command
like this:

   make MKDIR_P="$HOME/tmp/just-installed-gnu-mkdir -p"

But with hard-coded @MKDIR_P@ uses, it is not possible.