mkinstalldirs

[DJ Delorie]

> I'd supposed that it wouldn't go through its current complexity without
> some reason.

An interesting ChangeLog entry is this one:

2001-08-02  Richard Henderson  <rth@redhat.com>

        * Makefile.in, mklibgcc.in: Revert mkinstalldirs change.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2001-08/msg00123.html

Otherwise, there's little history in the ChangeLogs for mkinstalldirs.

> Related questions would be:
> 
> * Where is the master mkinstalldirs script?  Autoconf?

According to the binutils maintainer list, yes:

mkinstalldirs; move-if-change; symlink-tree
        autoconf: http://gnu.org
        Patches to autoconf-patches@gnu.org.
        Changes need to be done in tandem with the official AUTOCONF
        sources or submitted to the master file maintainer and brought
        in via a merge.

> * Could we just use one copy of it, rather than four (three different
> versions) in the tree?

If someone wants to sync up the top-level mkinstalldirs and start
migrating directories to use it, I'm OK with that.  Ping the other
projects (binutils, gdb, etc) if you do - might as well keep
everything in sync when we can.

The autoconf mkinstalldirs is vastly different from anything in either
the gcc or src repositories, though.

-rwxr-xr-x    730 Apr  3  1998 ./mkinstalldirs
-rwxr-xr-x    730 Aug 17 14:39 ./boehm-gc/mkinstalldirs
-rwxr-xr-x    650 Nov  8  1999 ./dejagnu/mkinstalldirs
-rwxr-xr-x    650 Nov  8  1999 ./expect/mkinstalldirs
-rwxr-xr-x    726 Dec  8  2000 ./fastjar/mkinstalldirs
-rw-r--r--    726 Sep  4  1999 ./gcc/mkinstalldirs
-rwxr-xr-x    650 Feb  6  2000 ./itcl/config/mkinstalldirs
-rwxr-xr-x    730 Nov 21  2000 ./winsup/mingw/mkinstalldirs

-rwxr-xr-x   1524 May 22 10:43 ./autoconf-2.52/config/mkinstalldirs