Feature request: make clone

[Thomas M. <mat...@ph...>]

Hi

Would it be possible to add a target to the makefile that will create a directory containing copies of everything that "make install" delivers, plus a short script that will do with the contents of that directory what "make install" does?

The idea is that "make clone" would create a directory that could be copied to a different computer.  Then running the script in the directory on that computer would put the gnuplot components where they need to be, without the need to compile them.

The motivation for this is mostly for installing gnuplot on Mac's of non-computer-science students.  Only one person (like an instructor) would need to download the compiler, download the gnuplot source, build the executables, and create the clone-directory.  Everyone else would just copy the clone-directory and run the script inside.  

I realize this would not necessarily work if the student Mac is running a different system version from the instructor.  It may be necessary to make a different clone-directory for each OS X system version.  But it would only be necessary to do ONCE per version, and not require EVERY student to install the compiler and do the build.

I also realize that students would still need to install Aquaterm and/or X11, but those have "real" installers so it's not such a big deal.

The instructor might want other items in the clone-directory and the clone-script, like libgd, libpng, freetype, and zlib, but that could be done manually after "make clone" has done its thing.


                                      Cheers

Prof. Thomas Mattison           Hennings 276
University of British Columbia  Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
6224 Agricultural Road          Vancouver  BC        V6T 1Z1  CANADA
mat...@ph...         phone: 604-822-9690  fax:604-822-5324