Re: AWKPATH and AWKLIBPATH: default values different from documentation (gawk 5.0.1)

[Andrew J. Schorr]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 12:39:42PM +0100, Jannick wrote:
> I think the usual way is - as you point out - that prefix is set once at
> configure-time: either explicitly on the command line or CONFIG_SITE does it
> for you or configure sets the default value '/usr/local' if no one does it.
> In this case everything is consistent. Running ./configure -h shows you the
> values ./configure uses if prefix is not given on the command line.  What I
> am trying to say is that prefix as at configure-time COULD be overridden in
> the two steps afterwards (make && make install - if you wish to split them
> up):
> - make prefix=/path1 ... compiles AWKPATH and AWKLIBPATH into gawk using
> path1

OK, yes, you could also change prefix at the make stage, although it's
not clear to me why that's appealing. In general, the directory scheme
is designed so that the locations referenced by AWKPATH and AWKLIBPATH
should make sense relative to where the binaries are installed.

> - make install DESTDIR=/destdir prefix=/path2 ... sets the parent directory
> of the bin directory gawk will be installed into

I think that's too late. At this point, the default AWKPATH and AWKLIBPATH
values have already been compiled into the gawk binary. You can certainly
choose to install it wherever you want, but that won't change the default
environment variable values. And gawk will not then be able to find the
bundled libraries and program files properly.

Regards,
Andy