Ubuntu snap plugin 'autotools' default 'make install' to be skipped while building with snapcraft

Question

I am building a snap package for my project, I have a library which I want to only compile. ie only /configure && make not : /configure && make && make install

As I had searched for the doc for it in Ubuntu snap, I found : https://snapcraft.io/docs/reference/plugins/autotools

Also searched here : https://github.com/search?o=desc&q=filename%3Asnapcraft.yaml+%22plugin%3A+autotools%22+&s=indexed&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93

But I couldn't find anything to skip the make install part. Can anyone suggest me how to do that ? A dirty way might be after the make install, I will add one shell script to recursively delete the make install generated files and then proceed further to application code compilation. But I think there should be a happy path of doing this nicely. So please let me know if there is any way to skip this make install when I run snapcraft to build snap package.

Answer 1

You can override what is done in the install stage with an install: stanza which you could leave empty or so nothing but echo a blank line, showing you're skipping that. Alternatively if the Makefile has no install stanza, then you can use the install stanza to do whatever is required e.g.

parts:
  foo:
    source: .
    plugin: autotools
    install: |
      cp -a somebinary $SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL/bin
      cp -a somesupportfiles $SNAPCRAFT_PART_INSTALL/foo

This will just use the shell cp command to do the installation.