[geeks] Irix's wonky install

[Gregory Leblanc]

So, had anybody else noticed that Irix has some wonky utilities?  I
can't find a way to make their sed program match digits, which is
silly, but easy enough to get around (just install gnu sed).  But
what's -really- bizzare is their install program.  It supports -d and
-dir, for "GNU/BSD Compatibility".  However, it doesn't actually seem
to be compatible.  For some reason, 'install -d dirname' is trying to
create /dirname; that is, its trying to create it under /, instead of
under $PWD.  This makes it impossible to use any relative paths, and
converting this project to use absolute paths is more trouble than I'm
up for.  Here's what the man page says, which is slightly confusing:

     -dir (or -d for BSD/GNU compatibility)
                     Create directories named by concatenating $ROOT to the
                     file arguments.  When -dir is given, all the file
                     arguments are taken as directories; files and directories
                     may not both be installed with the same command.

So, I'm not quite sure what it's talking about with that $ROOT, but it
doesn't actually seem to be talking about the environmental variable
named ROOT, since that's not set, either before or after running
install, nor in my shell.  Perhaps getting rid of $ROOT would make it
work properly, but I have no thoughts on how to do that.  Help?
     Greg