Re: MAKEFLAGS support required to override prefix at install time

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Matt,

* Matt Kraai wrote on Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 06:44:20PM CEST:
> I'm trying to use Stow on an HP-UX 10.20 system.  The Stow manual
> recommends specifying one prefix at configure time and then overriding
> it at install time.  That is,
> 
>  $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME
>  ...
>  $ make
>  ...
>  $ make install prefix=$HOME/stow
>  ...
> 
> When I try this, it installs files using the original prefix (i.e.,
> $HOME), not the override (i.e., $HOME/stow).

> If I enable UNIX95 behavior in the system make (which enables support
> for MAKEFLAGS) or use GNU Make, the prefix can be overridden at
> install time.
> 
> Is there anything Automake could or should do to address this problem?

Not too much, it's a feature/limitation of HP-UX (and several other
non-GNU) make.  You can use
  env prefix=$HOME/stow make -e install

as a workaround, but note that this also causes other variables in your
environment to override make macros in the makefiles, which may not be
desirable.

Well, since Automake provides AM_MAKEFLAGS with all recursion, I guess
you can also use
  make install prefix=$HOME/stow AM_MAKEFLAGS=prefix=$HOME/stow

that should work as well.

Cheers,
Ralf