Re: install seems to be doing things needlessly (fwd)

[Jim Meyering]

Dag Wieers <address@hidden> wrote:
> This mail was sent to address@hidden about a month ago.
>
> I noticed the following 'strange' behaviour and I was wondering if it was
> a bug or just not important to change.
>
>       address@hidden soapbox-0.1.0]# soapbox -p /var/tmp/soapbox make install
>       install -d -m0755 /lib /usr/bin
>       soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib", 0755).
>       soapbox: Attempt to chmod("/lib", 0755).
...
>
> You'll notice double chmod's (probably the default first and then the
> requested one).

Thanks for reporting that.
Are you sure you're using the install binary from the coreutils package?
I tried to reproduce it like this (from a build directory, hence the
spelling of ginstall, not install):

  $ mkdir src /tmp/dest
  $ strace -e chmod ./ginstall -d -m0755 src /tmp/dest
  chmod("src", 0755)                      = 0
  chmod("/tmp/dest", 0755)                = 0

and didn't see the double chmod.
Can you provide a small example like the above that shows the problem?

Please be sure to use the latest:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.0.tar.bz2

> Another problem I frequently have is when doing install -d
>
>       address@hidden soapbox-0.1.0]# soapbox -p /var/tmp/soapbox install -d 
> -m0755 /var/tmp/soapbox-1.2.3
>       soapbox: Attempt to mkdir("/var", 0755).
>       soapbox: Attempt to mkdir("/var/tmp", 0755).
>
> Is this the expected behaviour of install ? Creating directories
> that already exist ?

I couldn't reproduce that either.