FreeTDS Development Group

["James K. Lowden" <jklowden AT freetds.org>]

On Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:41:25 -0400
Todd Szymanski <toddzman AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Just wanted to pass along that I was unable to successfully do a 'make
> install' on 0.9.1.  It seems like it worked, but it doesn't when you
> go to use it.  It looks like the install-sh that is included in the
> distribution does not handle multiple files on one command line (I've
> only tried it on Solaris).

Your experience isn't typical, to say the least.  I wonder: does
Solaris have an install(1) on the PATH?  

$ file $(which install)
/usr/bin/install: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64 ....

It seems you *did* find a bug, albeit one masked on machines with a
built-in install utility.  The FreeTDS distribution tarball includes
an install script, but configuration.ac -- from which the configure
script is generated by autoconf -- does not reference it as
AC_PROG_INSTALL.  I would think configure, finding no built-in install
utility and having not been directed to use another, would simply
fail.  Apparently, it uses the one it finds in the current working
directory, if extant.  And fails silently.  :-/

I'm inclined to simply remove install-sh from the FreeTDS
distribution.  In 2011, machines without an install utility must be
very rare, and a message like "sh: install: command not found" would be
better than pretending to work.  

That leaves it to the sysadmin to provide an install utility.  The
alternatives I don't like as well.  If we force configure to use a
shell script, installation speed suffers.  If we don't, but include
a shell script as a last resort, it will be used infrequently,
and likely not work when called upon.  

--jkl