Re: Why relink the library during make install?

[Stepan Kasal]

Hallo Miles,

On 01 Aug 2002 10:50:30 +0900, Miles Bader <address@hidden> wrote:
> So the questions as far as I can see are:
> 
>   (1) Does gettext _really_ not support this properly on non-broken systems
>       (most importantly, GNU & BSD)?
> 
>   (2) If so, why?  Automake, libtool, etc., should do the right thing.
> 
> [A side issue is that Bruno doesn't like this feature, preferring to
> suggest that everyone use DESTDIR instead.]

Bruno has explained this in another thread.  Not that he doesn't like DESTDIR,
he choosed DESTDIR over prefix for some reason and dived into libtool to make
it work.  He doesn't volunteer to fix libtool for prefix too.

I remember that when working for SuSE, I've learned to prefer DESTDIR over
prefix, since prefix doesn't work for all packages.  I don't remember the
actual packages, sorry.  But it was about three years ago, so gettext
definitely is not first package for which this doesn't work.

I take the liberty to attach the Bruno's posting, which summarizes the issue
very clearly.

Regards,
        Stepan Kasal

From: address@hidden (Bruno Haible)
Subject: Re: gettext
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 23:13:42 +0200
Newsgroups: gnu.utils.bug
Message-ID: <address@hidden>

Stepan Kasal writes:
> Now I understand that gettext is violating GCS

I understand your point of view; however:

* The feature that you and Russ Allbery request cannot be implemented
  on HP-UX, AIX and SunOS 4,

* For other platforms, in particular Linux, it is implementable,
  under two forms: "make install DESTDIR=..." and "make install prefix=...".
  These two forms are equivalent, as you demonstrated through

     ln -s /afs/.example.com /tmp/destdir/afs/example.com

  Upon popular demand, I've hacked support for the first one into
  the copy of libtool used in gettext. It's useless to ask for the
  second form when the first form is already implemented.

> Would you please implement this?

I've hacked libtool enough. Ask the libtool people.

Bruno