R devel - Feb 2006 - R-Project build system: DESTDIR support

Hello,

I am writing you about the GNU R-Project,
as part of by effort to help GNU projects provide a better, more
consistent build system.

Currently, your project does not support the DESTDIR variable in
generated Makefiles (marked as optional in the GNU coding policies, make and
automake manual).

In my opinion, DESTDIR support can be very helpful for the user, the
distribution-specific packagers and third-party programs, because it
offers a consistent and portable way to perform staged installations.

In each case, please contact me at this address <claudio at gnu.org>
to provide your feedback about this issue _in any case_, should you
want to support DESTDIR or not.

I am ready to offer you information, help and support.

Thank you for your help in making GNU projects build systems better.

Claudio Fontana

Hi Claudio,

On 25 February 2006 at 03:11, Claudio Fontana wrote:
| Hello,
| 
| I am writing you about the GNU R-Project,
| as part of by effort to help GNU projects provide a better, more
| consistent build system.
| 
| Currently, your project does not support the DESTDIR variable in
| generated Makefiles (marked as optional in the GNU coding policies, make and
| automake manual).
| 
| In my opinion, DESTDIR support can be very helpful for the user, the
| distribution-specific packagers and third-party programs, because it
| offers a consistent and portable way to perform staged installations.

I'm confused. We've been maintaining R in Debian quite merrily even with
the
exisiting standards. To the best of my knowledge things seem to work without
DESTDIR. 

In a nutshell, what we do -- and this is, or at least used to be, pretty
canonical across GNU-style packages and has been in effect for probably a
dozen years.  Now, I may miss something newer happening elsewhere...

The key is that configure details the _final_ location on the installed
system, whereas 'make install' pivots off to a subdirectory in the
archive of
the currently built package is 'installed' before being tarred:

	./configure --prefix=/usr			\
		    --with-system-bzlib			\
[...]
		    --build $(buildarch)

[...]

	$(MAKE)		CFLAGS="$(compilerflags)"		\
			CXXFLAGS="$(compilerflags)"		\
			FFLAGS="$(compilerflags)"		\
			CC=${compiler}				\
			CXX=${cxxcompiler}			\
			${fortrancompiler}			\
			R

[...]

	$(MAKE) prefix=$(debtmp)/usr				\
		mandir=$(debtmp)/usr/share/man			\
		rsharedir=$(debtmp)/usr/share/R/share		\
		rincludedir=$(debtmp)/usr/share/R/include	\
		rdocdir=$(debtmp)/usr/share/R/doc		\
		install

So could you detail how using DESTDIR makes this (or, for that matter,
another) use case any easier or better?
 
| In each case, please contact me at this address <claudio at gnu.org>
| to provide your feedback about this issue _in any case_, should you
| want to support DESTDIR or not.
|
| I am ready to offer you information, help and support.

You may want to talk to Kurt Hornik who covers the autoconf et al build
process for R.  Whenever I had little gripes or needs, he reflected these
and typically with much better solutions than I could have proposed :)
 
| Thank you for your help in making GNU projects build systems better.

Thanks for this initiative. It could indeed makes things better

Cheers, Dirk


-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison

Claudio Fontana wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> --- Hin-Tak Leung <hin-tak.leung at cimr.cam.ac.uk>
<snipped>
>>Change to DESTDIR should be quite simple. I think it
>>is mostly one
>>line change in R/Makeconf.in,
>>where
>>        rhome = ${libdir}/R
>>to
>>        rhome = ${DESTDIR}/${libdir}/R
>>and maybe one or two other places, concerning that
>>wrapper script.
> 
> 
> Please DON'T. If I understood your idea correctly,
> this is not the meaning of DESTDIR,
> and placing DESTDIR there is harmful since its meaning
> is overloaded. The staged installation does _not_ need
> to be functional. Its hard coded paths must refer to
> the _final destination_ which is determined by prefix
> only.
<snipped>
> Then try this (replace user with your user name):
> 
> $ tar -zxvf bc-1.06.tar.gz
> $ cd bc-1.06
> $ ./configure --prefix=/home/user/tmp
> $ make
> $ make install DESTDIR=/home/user/install-destdir
> $ ls /home/user/tmp
> ls: /home/user/tmp: No such file or directory
> $ find /home/user/install-destdir
> [study the output of this command]
I don't think you understand me correctly.
Doing the insertion as I wrote, (Makeconf.in is
included by R's top-level Makefile as far as I understand it),
would make "make install DESTDIR=/someotherroot/" work.
You probably mean this construction:

DESTDIR ?=${libdir}/R
rhome = ${DESTDIR}

instead. Either way, please study what Makeconf.in does.

HTL