rpms/poker-eval/FC-4 poker-eval.spec,1.8,1.9

[Thomas Vander Stichele]

Hi,

> > > Why the %makeinstall?  makeinstall is an anachronism and should only be
> > > used if make DESTDIR=... install is nonfunctional.

I was asked to drop this as well from a .spec and just like Christopher
I was unaware that %makeinstall was so strongly discouraged.

The explanation in the Packaging Guidelines is, IMO, a little poor in
providing any reasoning for this, and could be expanded.  As it's
explained right now it's not making the case it should be making.  I'll
detail below, since most of the text from the wiki seems to come from
this mail.

> >   What's wrong with using it?
> %makeinstall overrides a set of environment variables during
> "make install". I.e. it performs
> make prefix="..." includedir="..." ...

They're make variables, not environment variables.  While the difference
is subtle, there is a difference.  In any case, this is a statement of
fact (albeit wrong), not a description of what is wrong with %
makeinstall, afaict ?

> It is error prone,

This is too vague to mean anything.  make DESTDIR=... install is also
error-prone.

>  can have effects inside of (broken) Makefiles

So can make DESTDIR=... install.  Consider a Makefile that *does not
have* DESTDIR :)

>  and can
> trigger rebuilds when executing "make install".

This could be true; in all these years, I've never noticed it happening
though that I can remember, so it must be that the 5 seconds of
additional install time did not really worry me on 5 minute package
builds.

>  If a package contains
> libtool archives, it will cause broken *.la's being installed.

We don't install .la files anyway, so this is a red herring.

> "make DESTDIR=... install" overrides a single environment variable

If "single" vs. "many" is the reason, then this is just as much an
"aesthetic" reason, and I prefer Christopher's in that case.

>  and
> is supposed to be specially designed for re-rooting installs to a
> different installation root ($RPM_BUILD_ROOT) than the package has been
> configured for ("/").

True, and I like DESTDIR as well when I need it.  This seems to me the
only really valid reason to discourage %makeinstall, but as such it
seems better to me to remove the "fake reasons" from above, and just
explain this one better, with an example or something.

As it stands, the packaging guidelines on this topic sound more like
unfounded dogma and thus are not very believable.

Thanks
Thomas