Re: DESTDIR vs `make install exec_prefix='

[Harlan Stenn]

Ralf wrote:
> What I meant was this:
>   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
>   make
>   make install exec_prefix=
> 
> with Automake 1.10.2, most likely ends up with an error at installation
> time, or with "install" overwriting files in the build tree or so.  And
> this:
> 
>   ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
>   make
>   make install exec_prefix= DESTDIR=/tmp/dest
> 
> most likely copies executable files into the /tmp/dest directory, which
> doesn't seem desirable either.  So, for both of these cases, Automake
> 1.11 will not install executable files at all.
> 
> This change in funtionality only affects cases where an installation
> directory has been set to the empty string.  It should not affect your
> use case for stow at all.
> 
> Hope that clears this up.

Reading the doc pages for automake, it looks like automake should not
install *anything* if either prefix or exec_prefix is the empty string,
under any circumstances.

So if one was trying to effect some interesting local policy described
above,

   make install exec_prefix=/ DESTDIR=/tmp/dest

or

   make install prefix=/ DESTDIR=/tmp/dest

would be the way to do that, right?

H