I'm currently using the usual technique in my Makefile to install individual files:
install:
install -D executable ${BIN_DIR}
But I just ran across a situation where I need to move a whole directory and all files underneath it into place.
Is cp -r the best way or is there a more linux-y/unix-y way to do this?
My version of install(1) (Debian) has:
-d, --directory
treat all arguments as directory names; create all components of the specified directories
-t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY
copy all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY
So if you wanted to use install(1) consistently throughout your Makefile you could do:
install -d destdir
install srcdir/* -t destdir
-t isn't recursive however - if srcdir contains directories, then they won't get copied.