[GRASS5] Proposal for make

[Justin Hickey]

Hello all

In view of the "disaster" that happened to one of our users today I
would like to propose the following changes for the Makefile.

I think it is vital that grass should NOT be compiled as the root user.
The standard way to compile open source software is usually

configure
make
make install

where only the "make install" step is run as the root user. Our problem
is that we do not have the Makefile system required for this type of
installation. Thus, I propose the following as a means for removing the
need to be root user to compile grass.

We can change the Makefile to have a new target (say binaries) that
would perform basically the same task as what "make install" does now
but it would not require root access and would not install anything
under /usr/local. Instead, GISBASE would be defined as the current
directory and all compilation would occur below this directory. Grass
can currently do this now since this is how I compile grass. Now the
only problem is that we need to copy the files to the installation
directories. So, we redefine "make install" to do this and the only
problem would be to change the value of GISBASE in the grass5 script
after it is copied. This should be a simple task to do. Now a user can
compile grass with

configure
make binaries
make install

and the only step that may require root access will be the "make
install". In fact we could even check that the uid is not root for make
binaries and suggest that the user not compile as user root.

Of course we would also need to provide a "make uninstall" that deleted
the files copied by "make install".

If people agree to this proposal then I further propose that this system
be incorporated for grass5.0 stable.

As always, any comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jazzman (a.k.a. Justin Hickey)  e-mail: jhickey at hpcc.nectec.or.th
High Performance Computing Center
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
Bangkok, Thailand
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of us who do.  ---Anonymous

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