Makefile lacks 'install' target

[alexeymuranov]

Currently Makefile has no install target. Quoting from an email exchange on GAP Support mailing list,

This means that packagers have to reimplement the equivalent of 'make install' themselves.

I think that for packaging GAP for Unix-like platforms, it would be desirable to have make install install everything into appropriate places under prefix, preferably in accordance with Linux Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

[fingolfin]

Yes, make install is not supported. I do agree that it would be desirable in princple, but some work is needed. For starters, GAP itself would need to be made aware of this mode of operation. I spent some time thinking about that in the past. If somebody wants to have a go at this, feel free to ping me to discuss some of the potential pitfalls.

That said, currently GAP is meant to be run directly from its build directory, and it works fine that way, so for me this is not a super high priority issue -- though of course people who want to package GAP for UNIX systems certainly would appreciate it and benefit from it.

[stevelinton]

A make install that moves the build directory as a whole to a specified target location and fixes things up to work there (if necessary) would be useful. However we have no plans to support GAP operating other than from a (or several) GAP root directories so compliance with the filesystem hierarchy standard is not on the cards.

[frankluebeck]

I have commented on this topic in this discussion on a pull request.

Just moving the whole build tree to some other location is not that difficult (but a bit tricky when it is supposed to work including installed packages).

But making GAP work with files distributed, say, according to the Linux Filestystem Hierachy Standard (are there similar standards for non-Linux systems?) would be a lot of work, because all code in GAP and in many packages which needs to read files (say, for loading library and packages, using the help system, reading data files, ...) would need to be checked and in most cases to be changed. It may be difficult to find anyone who is willing to do this work.

[alexeymuranov]

About packages, IMO package installation should be separated from the installation of the core system. There is some discussion on the mailing list under subject "Package Uniformity" that might be relevant.