Re: Fine-grained install control

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Keith MARSHALL wrote on Thu, May 04, 2006 at 05:36:26PM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote, quoting me:
> >> you could just inline the assignment:
> >> 
> >>   mandir=`echo $mandir | sed s?^${prefix}?/usr/local?`
> >> in your configure.ac.
> >
> > Which will make your package blatantly incompatible with the old
> > version of the GCS;
> 
> Eh?  The OP's intent may not be strictly GCS compliant in any case,
> but I fail to see how this would make it any less so.

Erm, when I
  ./configure --prefix=/foo

then some stuff will be installed outside /foo?  That would strike
a distribution person as quite odd, even if it was the intent of the OP.
(I did not claim that your specific suggestion makes it even less GCS
compliant than the OP's intent.)

> > and will stop working once your package uses Autoconf-2.60 which
> > supports the newer version.
> 
> Sure.  I did say the the suggestion was `off-the-cuff'; that means
> it's quick and dirty, and by no means likely to be future proof.
> It's compatible with autoconf <= 2.59, (at least >= 2.50, and maybe
> even some earlie versions); looks like it will break in 2.60, but
> this is always a peril when hacking below the surface, to achieve
> something out of the ordinary.

Yep, that's right.

> > Why not *just* *use* --mandir?
> 
> Yep; that's what I would be inclined to do myself, but the OP
> *explicitly* said that he wanted to avoid this.  Perhaps the issues
> this sort of hacking raises will help to convince him that just
> using `--mandir=...' is a significantly more robust option.

Yes, let us hope that.

> > Why not a script that invokes `configure --mandir=... $@'
> 
> Because it doesn't conform to the standard `./configure && make ...'
> build paradigm?

Yep.  Conforming "halfway" to some standard is always a problem.

Why not just have the configure script output a message at the end,
stating where the manpages will be installed, and how that may be
overridden?  A pointer to "./configure --help" would probably suffice.

> > If that's too much, why not add a setting to your and your preferred
> > users' config.site file(s), so they don't have to remember this?
> 
> How the heck do you, as a developer, possibly hope to control what
> your end users put in *their* config.site files?

You don't.  Unless all your users are physically or logically close to
you (share the same NFS mounts, for example).

Cheers,
Ralf