Re: [Quilt-dev] Bug: Missing files with make install w/o previous make

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Rene,

On Thu, 2023-08-10 at 16:50 +0200, Rene Kita wrote:
> When working from the git repo and starting clean a `make install'
> errors out because some files where not generated.
> 
> 
> This works:
> 
> make distclean || :; ./configure --prefix=/tmp/ && make && make
> install
> 
> 
> This does not work:
> 
> make distclean || :; ./configure --prefix=/tmp/ && make install
> 
> 
> Errors out with:
> 
> /usr/bin/install: cannot stat 'doc/README': No such file or directory
> make: *** [Makefile:318: install-main] Error 1

I don't consider this to be a bug. You obviously can't install before
building, so calling "make install" before "make" is simply not a good
idea, it can't succeed for any package, not just quilt.

Furthermore, I would argue that "make && make install" in your first
example is a bad idea. You typically need to be root to install a
package, but you don't want to build anything as root, for obvious
security reasons. And this is the reason why we don't want to add
dependencies to the Makefile to let "make install" generate the missing
files, because that would most likely cause these files to be generated
by the wrong user.

In other words, if it hurts, well, just don't do it.

-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support