Hi,

I notice the following in the MakeMaker docs (version 5.91_01):

                                         INSTALLDIRS set to
                                   perl        site          vendor

                         PREFIX          SITEPREFIX          VENDORPREFIX
          INST_ARCHLIB   INSTALLARCHLIB  INSTALLSITEARCH     
INSTALLVENDORARCH
          INST_LIB       INSTALLPRIVLIB  INSTALLSITELIB      
INSTALLVENDORLIB
          INST_BIN       INSTALLBIN      INSTALLSITEBIN      
INSTALLVENDORBIN
          INST_SCRIPT    INSTALLSCRIPT   INSTALLSCRIPT       INSTALLSCRIPT
          INST_MAN1DIR   INSTALLMAN1DIR  INSTALLSITEMAN1DIR  
INSTALLVENDORMAN1DIR
          INST_MAN3DIR   INSTALLMAN3DIR  INSTALLSITEMAN3DIR  
INSTALLVENDORMAN3DIR

I'm curious about why INST_SCRIPT doesn't have different values in the 
three columns.  Is this why things like LWP's "HEAD" script are 
installing to /usr/bin on OS X instead of to /usr/local/bin?

In my case, I'm writing a prompt like the following, but I suspect 
there's a better way to get the destination directory so that the user 
could override it with INST_SCRIPT=/foo or something.  Is there some way 
to get this value from MakeMaker instead of from Config?

   if (prompt("Do you want to install the command-line script 
'categorizer' ".
              "to $Config::Config{installscript}?", 'n') =~ /^y/i) {
     $options{EXE_FILES} = [qw(eg/categorizer)];
   }

  -Ken

On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:54:22 GMT:

> From: ken@mathforum.org (Ken Williams)

Oh, sheesh. Probably I was an idiot to answer this article of Ken's. I 
think he's probably well-aware of all the points I made; I momentarily 
blanked on who this poster was.

<RoseAnne RosannaDanna voce>nevermind ...</voce>

   Soren A

-- 

                    --*perlspinr*--
**Helping to consume excess Internet bandwidth since 1996**

On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 02:49  AM, Soren A wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:54:22 GMT:
>
>> From: ken@mathforum.org (Ken Williams)
>
> Oh, sheesh. Probably I was an idiot to answer this article of Ken's. I
> think he's probably well-aware of all the points I made; I momentarily
> blanked on who this poster was.

I think I probably don't have such a high standard as that. =)  
And in any case, I'm not sure any human could keep track of all 
the MakeMaker options in his/her head at once.

  -Ken

On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 23:09:44 GMT, ken@mathforum.org (Ken Williams) wrote in 
news:AC3B221A-F113-11D6-A12F-0003939C4354@mathforum.org:

> 
> On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 02:49  AM, Soren A wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 05 Nov 2002 01:54:22 GMT:
>>
>>> From: ken@mathforum.org (Ken Williams)
>>
>> Oh, sheesh. Probably I was an idiot to answer this article of Ken's. I
>> think he's probably well-aware of all the points I made; I momentarily
>> blanked on who this poster was.
> 
> I think I probably don't have such a high standard as that. =)  
> And in any case, I'm not sure any human could keep track of all 
> the MakeMaker options in his/her head at once.

I don't think so either. Tonight I may be nearly as close as i will ever 
get. By day after tomorrow probably half will have leaked out, at least.

 ;-)  Soren A

-- 

                    --*perlspinr*--
**Helping to consume excess Internet bandwidth since 1996**

On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 12:54:22PM +1100, Ken Williams wrote:
> I'm curious about why INST_SCRIPT doesn't have different values in the 
> three columns.  Is this why things like LWP's "HEAD" script are 
> installing to /usr/bin on OS X instead of to /usr/local/bin?

Config.pm has installbin, installsitebin and installvendorbin but only
installscript.  Dunno why.  There's no reason INSTALLSITESCRIPT and
INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT couldn't be figured out like the other variables that
aren't in Config.pm are.

Honestly, I was just sick of the whole PREFIX problem and decided to leave
it as is.  I'll welcome a patch.


-- 

Michael G. Schwern   <schwern@pobox.com>    http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl Quality Assurance      <perl-qa@perl.org>         Kwalitee Is Job One
Do not try comedy at home!  Milk & Cheese are advanced experts!  Attempts at
comedy can be dangerously unfunny!

On Thursday, November 7, 2002, at 12:37  PM, Michael G Schwern wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 05, 2002 at 12:54:22PM +1100, Ken Williams wrote:
>> I'm curious about why INST_SCRIPT doesn't have different values in the
>> three columns.  Is this why things like LWP's "HEAD" script are
>> installing to /usr/bin on OS X instead of to /usr/local/bin?
>
> Config.pm has installbin, installsitebin and installvendorbin but only
> installscript.  Dunno why.  There's no reason INSTALLSITESCRIPT and
> INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT couldn't be figured out like the other 
> variables that
> aren't in Config.pm are.
>
> Honestly, I was just sick of the whole PREFIX problem and 
> decided to leave
> it as is.  I'll welcome a patch.

Okay.  I'll wait a week or so for someone like Andreas or Andy 
to chime in and explain why there are no other INSTALL*SCRIPT 
entries, and if that doesn't happen I'll assume it's an error 
and I'll try to fix it.

Would it be wrong to just put scripts into INSTALL*BIN?  Do we 
really need to make a big distinction between executable 
binaries and executable scripts?  I'm ignorant of the important 
issues, but if we could just use INSTALL*BIN it wouldn't require 
patching Config.pm and all the stuff that generates it in the 
perl core.

  -Ken

On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 01:18:17PM +1100, Ken Williams wrote:
> Would it be wrong to just put scripts into INSTALL*BIN?  Do we 
> really need to make a big distinction between executable 
> binaries and executable scripts?  I'm ignorant of the important 
> issues, but if we could just use INSTALL*BIN it wouldn't require 
> patching Config.pm and all the stuff that generates it in the 
> perl core.

I dunno, some people out there still worry that /usr/bin is for machine-code
binaries and "scripts" should go elsewhere. *shrug*  That's a boat I will
leave to the Config folks to rock.


-- 

Michael G. Schwern   <schwern@pobox.com>    http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl Quality Assurance      <perl-qa@perl.org>         Kwalitee Is Job One
Nature is pissed.
        http://www.unamerican.com/

>>>>> On Thu, 7 Nov 2002 13:18:17 +1100, Ken Williams <ken@mathforum.org> said:

  > Okay.  I'll wait a week or so for someone like Andreas or Andy to
  > chime in and explain why there are no other INSTALL*SCRIPT entries,
  > and if that doesn't happen I'll assume it's an error and I'll try to
  > fix it.

Sorry, I have no answer to this one.

  > Would it be wrong to just put scripts into INSTALL*BIN?  Do we really
  > need to make a big distinction between executable binaries and
  > executable scripts?

The reason for 'script' being separated from 'bin' was that you can
share scripts between architectures but usually cannot share binaries.

If people actually make use of this distiction, nobody knows.

-- 
andreas

On Thursday, November 7, 2002, at 05:56  PM, Andreas J. Koenig wrote:

>>>>>> On Thu, 7 Nov 2002 13:18:17 +1100, Ken Williams 
>>>>>> <ken@mathforum.org> said:
>
>> Okay.  I'll wait a week or so for someone like Andreas or Andy to
>> chime in and explain why there are no other INSTALL*SCRIPT entries,
>> and if that doesn't happen I'll assume it's an error and I'll try to
>> fix it.
>
> Sorry, I have no answer to this one.
>
>> Would it be wrong to just put scripts into INSTALL*BIN?  Do we really
>> need to make a big distinction between executable binaries and
>> executable scripts?
>
> The reason for 'script' being separated from 'bin' was that you can
> share scripts between architectures but usually cannot share binaries.
>
> If people actually make use of this distiction, nobody knows.

It sounds like the kind of thing someone's going to be using somewhere, 
so it probably shouldn't get completely broken.

If I were to fix this, I think there would be a few parts to it:

  1) MakeMaker should try to determine a better place to put scripts (by 
guessing)
  2) EU::Install should honor that
  3) Config.pm should have INSTALLSITESCRIPT and INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT 
entries so MM doesn't have to guess

In practice, I don't think any 'hints' files (in 5.8, anyway) have 
INSTALLBIN and INSTALLSCRIPT different, so it's probably pretty safe to 
guess from INSTALL*BIN, I think.

Then I have to figure out how to cooperate/repeat with Module::Build.

  -Ken

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Ken Williams wrote:

> > Config.pm has installbin, installsitebin and installvendorbin but only
> > installscript.  Dunno why.
 
> Okay.  I'll wait a week or so for someone like Andreas or Andy 
> to chime in and explain why there are no other INSTALL*SCRIPT 
> entries, and if that doesn't happen I'll assume it's an error 
> and I'll try to fix it.

There's no deep reason.  They weren't used anywhere so metaconfig
didn't include them in Configure (and, ultimately in Config.pm.)
Since they didn't appear in Config.pm, nobody tried to use them.
When this sad circular state of affairs became apparent I posted a
Policy_sh.SH patch to fix it, but it didn't make it in time for
5.8.0.

Change #17951 incorporates this into perl-current, and 5.8.1-to-be ought
to have it as well.

> Would it be wrong to just put scripts into INSTALL*BIN?  Do we 
> really need to make a big distinction between executable 
> binaries and executable scripts?

Some folks historically have done so.  Others haven't.  If there's no
*SCRIPT directory available, it probably would be a reasonable fallback to
put scripts into *BIN.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		doughera@lafayette.edu

On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 07:54:18PM +1100, Ken Williams wrote:
> It sounds like the kind of thing someone's going to be using somewhere, 
> so it probably shouldn't get completely broken.

The two likely candidates are AFS users, who routinely shuffle files around
all over the place and use obscure features of MM, and module repackagers
(ie. Redhat, Debian, etc...) who need to seperate out architecture dependent
vs independent bits.


> If I were to fix this, I think there would be a few parts to it:
> 
>  1) MakeMaker should try to determine a better place to put scripts (by 
> guessing)

Should be possible using the same tricks as the other iffy variables in
init_INSTALL().


>  2) EU::Install should honor that

It'll do that automaticly.  It doesn't know anything about the INSTALL*
variables, it just gets fed paths.  ExtUtils::Install is really just a
glorified copy command like GNU install.


>  3) Config.pm should have INSTALLSITESCRIPT and INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT 
> entries so MM doesn't have to guess

We'll still have to guess for all older versions, so no code savings there.
:(


> In practice, I don't think any 'hints' files (in 5.8, anyway) have 
> INSTALLBIN and INSTALLSCRIPT different, so it's probably pretty safe to 
> guess from INSTALL*BIN, I think.
> 
> Then I have to figure out how to cooperate/repeat with Module::Build.


-- 

Michael G. Schwern   <schwern@pobox.com>    http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl Quality Assurance      <perl-qa@perl.org>         Kwalitee Is Job One
You see, in this world there's two kinds of people.  Those with loaded
guns, and those who dig.  Dig.
                -- Blondie, "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly"

On Saturday, November 9, 2002, at 11:36  AM, Michael G Schwern wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 07:54:18PM +1100, Ken Williams wrote:
>> If I were to fix this, I think there would be a few parts to it:
>>
>>  1) MakeMaker should try to determine a better place to put scripts (by
>> guessing)
>
> Should be possible using the same tricks as the other iffy variables in
> init_INSTALL().

Thanks, I'll have a look.

>>  2) EU::Install should honor that
>
> It'll do that automaticly.  It doesn't know anything about the INSTALL*
> variables, it just gets fed paths.  ExtUtils::Install is really just a
> glorified copy command like GNU install.

Oh yeah.  Good.

>>  3) Config.pm should have INSTALLSITESCRIPT and INSTALLVENDORSCRIPT
>> entries so MM doesn't have to guess
>
> We'll still have to guess for all older versions, so no code savings 
> there.
> :(

RIght, I meant more to increase predictability and reduce guessing, not 
to actually simplify code.

  -Ken