A.27 STAR_SPECIAL_INSTALL_COMMAND

Third-party sources will not come with a make install target which installs a manifest. It is reasonably easy to add such support, however, as described in Section 4.5.3. The crucial feature is the one line installation command declared in the macro STAR_SPECIAL_INSTALL_COMMAND. If this macro variable is present in a configure.ac file, then Starlink automake will generate an install target which uses this command to do the installation, in such a way that a manifest file can be generated automatically. The argument to this macro is executed as the last command (or commands) in a subshell, the exit value of which is tested for a success status. For this to work, the command must have the following features:

1. It must include the exact string $(MAKE) (as opposed to plain `make'), as part of some $(MAKE) ... install command.
2. It must be prepared to install its files in a location which is prefixed by the value of the environment variable $DESTDIR. Recent versions of automake generate support for this variable automatically, older versions appear to have had the same functionality, but used a variable $INSTALL_ROOT for it.
3. The subshell within which the given command is executed must exit with a zero status if the command is successful, and a non-zero status otherwise. This will happen if, for example, the last command in the macro argument is a `make' command, since this exits with a non-zero status if the make fails, and this is passed on to the containing shell.

The command may be as complicated as you like, but note that it is collapsed onto a single line by autoconf, so although you may spread the macro argument over several lines for readability, each command must be separated by a semicolon (or double-ampersand or double-bar).

See Section 4.5 for general discussion of importing third-party sources.