install make target

[StefanKarpinski]

You should be able to do make install and have a compiled copy of all of julia installed on a system. The default location should be under /usr/local but should be configurable. It would be nice even for us developers to have both an installed (unbroken) copy of julia and have the development copy still live in the repo directory. That way when the development version is broken, you can still use julia for other stuff.

[ViralBShah]

I feel comfortable that in the 1.0 release, people just build and run out of the source directory as we do now.

To install in /usr/local and have a stable + dev copy may require us to do a fair amount of testing with JULIA_HOME, paths etc.

In my opinion, this can be 2.0.

[StefanKarpinski]

It just occurred to me that this could be as simple as automatically making a symlink in ~/bin/ otherwise the getting started section may not work since julia directory may not be in the path.

[ViralBShah]

We do have a make install target now, and even ability to create debian packages. Closing this one.

[JeffBezanson]

make install needs to be documented. I don't understand how to use it, since it copies files to $(DESTDIR)/usr/share/julia. So what do I set DESTDIR to? Not /, since the first thing it does is rm -fr $(DESTDIR). Looks dangerous...

[StefanKarpinski]

I reopened this because no one besides Viral knows how this works and I'm not clear that it fully does. The intention of an install target is that you can build, make install, and then delete the build directory and have a standalone installation that continues to work without the source code, containing just the necessary executables and libraries.

[ViralBShah]

It installs a working copy of julia in DESTDIR. DESTDIR is a standard variable used by autoconf and such, and also by the debian build system.

So yes, you can do make install DESTDIR=$HOME/julia, and then delete the sources and get a working julia. This is how the debian package is built also. The issue that Jeff raised is that we need to have a DESTDIR by default so that nothing silly is done.

Can you try it out, and once satisfied, close it?

[StefanKarpinski]

Sure. We should probably default to /usr/local/julia since that's a standard destination for self-compiled installations (c.f. packaged installs). On Debian it can use /usr/share/julia since you said it didn't like /usr/local/julia for some reason.

[ViralBShah]

Using /usr/share on debian and /usr/local elsewhere is a bit of a kludge, since you have to look for /etc/debian_version and do something different on debian. Also, people may not always have root access. In such cases, we could take the view that DESTDIR has to be explicitly passed.

-viral

On Jan 8, 2012, at 11:40 PM, Stefan Karpinski wrote:

Sure. We should probably default to /usr/local/julia since that's a standard destination for self-compiled installations (c.f. packaged installs). On Debian it can use /usr/share/julia since you said it didn't like /usr/local/julia for some reason.

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[StefanKarpinski]

The default install location when you use ./configure to install software is /usr/local. Defaulting to anything else is surprising and bad. Debian is different because we're distributing a package, which would be expected not to go under /usr/local since it's precompiled.

[ViralBShah]

The Debian build process needs to invoke the install target, the way it is now.

-viral

On 09-Jan-2012, at 1:58 AM, Stefan Karpinskireply@reply.github.com wrote:

The default install location when you use ./configure to install software is /usr/local. Defaulting to anything else is surprising and bad. Debian is different because we're distributing a package, which would be expected not to go under /usr/local since it's precompiled.

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[ViralBShah]

Maybe we are getting to the point where we should start using autotools.

-viral

On 09-Jan-2012, at 1:58 AM, Stefan Karpinskireply@reply.github.com wrote:

The default install location when you use ./configure to install software is /usr/local. Defaulting to anything else is surprising and bad. Debian is different because we're distributing a package, which would be expected not to go under /usr/local since it's precompiled.

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[StefanKarpinski]

Ugh. Autotools is the worst. What would it provide us with?

On Jan 8, 2012, at 4:27 PM, "Viral B. Shah"reply@reply.github.com wrote:

Maybe we are getting to the point where we should start using autotools.

-viral

On 09-Jan-2012, at 1:58 AM, Stefan Karpinskireply@reply.github.com wrote:

The default install location when you use ./configure to install software is /usr/local. Defaulting to anything else is surprising and bad. Debian is different because we're distributing a package, which would be expected not to go under /usr/local since it's precompiled.

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#6 (comment)