Re: make install bites...

[davidn@sdev.usn.blaze.net.au (David Nugent)]

Sherwood Botsford writes:
> 1. Since zmailer installs so many programs, I'd like an option
> 'make install-list' that would tell me exactly what it's going to
> go where.  Doing a make -n install is not trivial to interpret.

Which is really related to the next question...


> 2. It's not clear from INSTALL how to keep zmailer from installing
> stuff into the /usr/local/bin.  It gives the impression that this
> stuff in installed into MAILBIN.

This is actually a bug in the installation process, that has
been present since the implementation of the autoconf generated
configure. I keep complaining about it every time I need to
build a new version of zmailer. :-(  The Makefiles for the
transport agents seem to be 'hard coded' to /usr/local/bin
and are not modified by configure. Since I haven't built since
version .38, I assume from your comments that this still hasn't
been fixed.

Back to question 1, if this worked correctly, then you'd see
all of zmailer's files under $MAILBIN, $MAILVAR, plus the sendmail,
rmail links (wherever they be) and /etc/{zmailer,mail}.conf.
And the postoffice tree of course. That's it.


> 4. I'd like a way to *quickly* back out if things didn't work.
> Perhaps as part of the install we could have a pair of scripts,
> makelinks and unmakelinks

Changing your MTA is not a trivial exercise, and I really
don't see that simple make recipies or scripts are going to
help or cover all bases. If it is a matter of restoring links
or copying backed up programs into place and setting permissions,
then creating a script to do it yourself in a manner that is
appropriate to your system is trivial. Second guessing beforehand
and coming up with a generic solution is not (especially wrt
setuid quirks, ownership and so on used by another MTA and the
behaviour of the tools used to carry out the task).

Personally, if they were supplied I would not trust such scripts
to do this correctly. Zmailer can do the Right Thing for itself,
but not for other MTAs in a restore.


Regards,

David Nugent, Unique Computing Pty Ltd - Melbourne, Australia
Voice +61-3-9791-9547 Data/BBS +61-3-9792-3507 3:632/348@fidonet
davidn@blaze.net.au http://www.blaze.net.au/~davidn