Install data directory tree with massive number of files using automake

autoconfautomakeautotoolsinstallation

I have a data directory which I would like automake to generate install and uninstall targets for. Essentially, I just want to copy this directory verbatim to the DATA directory, Normally, I might list all the files individually, like 

dist_whatever_DATA=dir/subdir/filea ...

But the problem arises when my directory structure looks like this

*root
 *subdir
  *~10 files
 *subdir
  *~10 files
 *subdir
  *~700 files
 *subdir
 ...
 ~20 subdirs

I just cannot list all 1000+ files included as part of my Makefile.am. That would be ridiculous.

I need to preserve the directory structure as well. I should note that this data is not generated at all by the build process, and is actually largely short audio recordings. So it's not like I would want automake to "check" that every file I want to install has actually been created, as they're either there or not, and whatever file is there, I know I want it to be installed, and whatever file is not, should not be installed. I know that this is the justification used in other places to not do wildcard instsalls, but all the possible reasons don't apply here.

Best Answer

I would use a script to generate a Makefile fragment that lists all the files:

echo 'subdir_files =' > subfiles.mk
find subdir -type f -print | sed 's/^/  /;$q;s/$/ \\/' >> subfiles.mk

and then include this subfiles.mk from your main Makefile.am:

include $(srcdir)/subfiles.mk
nobase_dist_pkgdata_DATA = $(subdir_files)

A second option is to EXTRA_DIST = subdir, and then to write custom install-data-local and uninstall-local rules.

The problem here is that EXTRA_DIST = subdir will distributes all files in subdir/, including backup files, configuration files (e.g. from your VCS), and other things you would not want to distribute.

Using a script as above let you filter the files you really want to distribute.

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