[CMake] Why CPack does not _ALWAYS_ use DESTDIR?

[Bill Hoffman]

Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 May 2008, Bill Hoffman wrote:
>> Eric Noulard wrote:
> ...
>>> Using absolute path install on unix is not a good idea either but
>>> you sometimes have to use it to put you file in /etc/ .
>>>
>>> Be sure I'm not willing to break some backward compatibilty but
>>> to avoid strange behavior when building installer.
>> There is one more issue.  CPack is supposed to work with any build
>> system not just CMake.   
> 
> Is this an important feature ? I mean, cpack is not really wide spread yet, 
> and I think it mostly has advantages if it's integrated with the rest of the 
> build done by cmake. At least requiring working DESTDIR support would be 
> acceptable IMO (I don't think compatibilty requirements for cpack are already 
> as strong as for cmake, since I guess much less people are already using it. 
> IMO cpack is just about to become mature.).

We have projects that use it for non-cmake parts of the build.  I don't 
want to break those projects.  In fact, the project that funded CPack is 
the one I am most concerned about breaking.

> 
> I actually found Erics argument that the default behaviour is not working for 
> absolute install dirs with any package generator quite good.
> 
> The rpm and deb generators are new, would it be ok to enable DESTDIR for these 
> two unconditionally ? There can be nobody who relies on this behaviour for 
> these two package types yet.
> 

I really don't like the idea of different defaults for different 
generators.  Hey, my stuff worked here, but not here type of stuff. 
IMO, the use of absolute dirs is a bug. :)


-Bill