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

[Rene Kita]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2023 at 05:58:26PM +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:
> Hi Rene,

Hi Jean,

thanks for the detailed answer.

> 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 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.

This is not my experience. Most packages I install from source just
build when calling 'make install'.

> 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.

As I always install into my $HOME, this does not affect me.

> 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.

I see. It's a valid point.

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

Or patch the Makefile - it's open source for a reason. ;-)

I will fix this on my side.

Rene