I disagree that `make prefix=... install' is a poor man's DESTDIR. Installing using DESTDIR will install things in $(DESTDIR)/$(prefix)/bin (and so on), which is a right pain when it comes to using something like GNU Stow to manage /usr/local.
-- Jack On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Ralf Wildenhues <ralf.wildenh...@gmx.de> wrote: > Hello Karl, Eric, > > * Eric Blake wrote on Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 01:33:42AM CET: >> On 01/03/2011 05:00 PM, Karl Berry wrote: >> > Thanks for the reference. Now that I know it, I suggest the Automake >> > manual simply have a sentence with an xref to that node. > > Yes, I agree with that, and I am still going to do that. You opened two > bug reports originally (inadvertently), I only closed the one that was > dealt with. Sorry if that was unclear before. > >> > Hmm, I'm not so sure that the GCS forbids doing the right thing (or that >> > it has to stay that way even if it does), but I won't pursue it further. >> >> What the GCS requires is that you can do 'make prefix=/alternate/path' >> and have that propagate through all the directory variables. Anything >> learned at configure time can thus be rewritten at make time, so the >> only safe place to record a directory variable's value is at make time. >> I don't think this aspect of the GCS needs changing. >> >> One other thing to point out is that the GCS documents that 'make >> install' should ideally not rebuild any source code, but that this ideal >> is only possible if you either _don't_ use 'make prefix=...', or if you >> use the same prefix in both 'make prefix=...' and 'make install prefix=...'. > > I don't think that is correct. In fact, I think it is entirely intended > to be possible to use a different prefix= setting for the all and for > the install targets, and the latter should still not rebuild sources. > Sort of a poor-man's DESTDIR. You can see the usefulness on MSYS and > DJGPP (where DESTDIR does not work due to drive prefix concatenation). > (Of course Libtool doesn't support the non-DESTDIR way, but that's > another story ...) > > Cheers, > Ralf > > > >