Re: different lib directories for gnutls and nettle

[Niels Möller]

Brian Gough <address@hidden> writes:

> Nettle should work better with other GNU packages if it follows the
> GNU standards, as the assumption of lib/ as a default is a common one
> in other configure scripts.  

I don't change the default lightly, but I still think it's the right
thing to do when

1. The user has not provided --libdir explicitly.

2. One is building on a multi-abi system, which is a case where the
   autoconf default doesn't even try to do the right thing.

3. The autoconf default is known to be wrong.

> For comparison the GMP library has ABI detection via configure but
> keeps the library directory as lib/ by default.

I'm reasonably familiar with the gmp configure script. It's true that it
currently always uses lib/ as the default, regardless of ABI, but it's
ABI related hacks can also cause other nasty surprises. So it's a good
example to exhibit the complexity of the problem, but it's not currently
solving it.

As for linux on x86_64, it appears that debian (and derivatives, I
imagine) put 64-bit libraries in lib/, while the distributions with
roots in redhat (at least rhel 5 and fedora 14) and gentoo follow the
fhs conventions and put 32-bit libraries in lib/. So to do the right
thing, configure has to distinguish between these two cases. What a mess
(but just the type of mess configure.ac is intended to help sort out).

Regards,
/Niels

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