Re: bin/72138: libc.so.5 isn't installed in a safe way

On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 07:05:11PM +0200, Matthias Andree wrote:
> X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
> To: Xin LI <delphij_at_frontfree.net>
> Cc: Matthias Andree <ma_at_dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de>,
> 	Ruslan Ermilov <ru_at_FreeBSD.org>,
> 	Matthias Andree <matthias.andree_at_web.de>, current_at_FreeBSD.org
> Subject: Re: bin/72138: libc.so.5 isn't installed in a safe way
> In-Reply-To: <20040928153537.GA3185_at_frontfree.net> (Xin LI's message of "Tue,
> 	28 Sep 2004 23:35:37 +0800")
> From: Matthias Andree <ma_at_dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de>
> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 19:05:11 +0200
> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux)
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> 
> Xin LI <delphij_at_frontfree.net> writes:
> 
> > So I personally prefer we have -S for the shared libraries (as Ruslan's
> > patch did) - and give our user community the choose of whether to have
> > INSTALL=install -S in their make.conf.
> >
> > What do you think about this?
> 
> It is important that a failing "make installworld" doesn't leave a
> non-working system behind. I don't care much about temporary files left
> over.

I concur that it's important, however, it is much less by chance when failing to
install binaries then failing to install shared objects, because the
latter would cause serious problem with *all* binaries when they are
dynamically linked newadays.

Generally speaking I've no idea why general binaries should be installed
in ``safe mode'' because:
	- Little chances that lacking one binary will cause an unbootable
	  system.  If you have different idea, we may probably list them
	  individually rather than having everything installed in ``safe
	  mode'', as most of the binaries won't cause problem even they
	  are deleted.  We can live without ``rm'' because we can still
	  ``make install'' it...
	- Users who feel this important can still set INSTALL=install -S
	  instead of the default make.conf value.
	- Rename operation might be expensive in some situation, for
	  instance, a flash disk.  Their life is limited by re-writes
	  and -S will cause four writes.

It seems to me, however, a good compromise to document this in make.conf
rather than making it default.  Maybe we can make the following changes:

	- Have INSTALL_BIN_FLAGS, INSTALL_LIB_FLAGS, INSTALL_SHLIB_FLAGS,
	  INSTALL_DOC knobs
	  which control the installation of binaries, libraries, shared
	  objects, documentations, while retaining the INSTALL as the
	  all-over knob.
	- Change
		${INSTALL} foo $[BINPATH}/bar
	  into
		${INSTALL} ${INSTALL_BIN_FLAGS} foo ${BINPATH}/bar
	  or so forth.  With this change, we can control whether
	  documentation is or is not installed in safe mode.

However, this change may need more tests so I'd ratherr having Ruslan's
patch in the tree first (and I highly recommend that it should be MFC'ed
to RELENG_5 and the upcoming RELENG_5_3), and consider the above after
5.3-RELEASE.

Will that helpful?

Cheers,
-- 
Xin LI <delphij frontfree net>	http://www.delphij.net/
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