I will point out that if xinstall copies directories, that raises the question of how to apply mode and owner/groups to the installed directories. owner/group should be safe to recurse, but mode wouldn't be.

On Feb 14, 2007, at 3:31 AM, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

On Feb 13, 2007, at 11:19 PM, Kevin Ballard wrote:

xinstall and file copy are different - xinstall is implemented in pextlib, and apparently doesn't recursively copy directories. It's a shame.

So yeah, while xinstall won't handle directories, copy will do it just fine. The difference is that copy won't handle file permissions, but xinstall does.

I was trying to copy the semantics of install(1) in order to obey what seemed to be the principle of least astonishment. That said, I'm having a hard time thinking of just how and where the world would end if someone were to enhance it to actually copy directories. I was probably being too conservative.