Overwriting files in Makefile

Horst von Brand· May 12, 2005, 15:56 UTC · lore

The current setup disturbs me. The Makefile copies the scripts into the destination, and then edits them in place. Why not just generate them from .in files before installing, i.e. by a rule something like

%: %.in
   sed -e 's;@LIBDIR@;$(sedlibdir);g' $^ > $@

with '@LIBDIR@' in the .in file whereever the substitution should take place. This way you also avoid the possible loss of the permission bits when fooling around (any SUID/SGID would get lost; not that it matters here).

In any case, the '\/'s (LTS, "Leaning Toothpick Syndrome") when futzing around with file paths can be avoided by using something else than '/' as delimiter for sed(1)'s substitute command, like ';' here.

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Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
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