planning for 'make install'

[Andy Dougherty]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Allison Randal wrote:

> One of our critical features for the 0.9.0 release next month is the 
> 'make install' target. Reini did some work in a branch, but other 
> questions or problems about installation have been bouncing around in 
> various posts, tickets, and IRC conversations. To pull it all together, 
> this mailing list thread is a collection point: please post summaries of 
> the problems you're aware of, as well as your thoughts on how 'make 
> install' should work.

I can think of five items off the top of my head:  (I have used the
common Unix name 'libparrot.so', but the actual name may well be
system-dependent.)

First, suppose there is an already-installed parrot.

1. When building parrot, how does the linker know which libparrot.so to
use?

2. When running the freshly-built parrot, how does the run-time loader
know which libparrot.so to use? 

3. When running the installed parrot, how does the run-time loader know
not to use a libparrot.so that might be in the build directory?

4.  How will multiple versions of parrot interact?  For example, suppose
a user installs parrot-2.0 and then deploys a project relying on
parrot-2.0's shared libparrot.so.  Then, the user wishes to install
parrot-2.x (perhaps to work on a new project) but would like to rely on
the old project still working.  What, exactly, will get installed where?

5.  Will parrot need the equivalent of perl5's vendor and site
libraries?

Please note that I'm not asking for answers to these questions now --
these are just questions I think ought to be considered.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		doughera at lafayette.edu