Re: Default for libexecdir

[Russ Allbery]

Bill Moseley <address@hidden> writes:

> Our project wants to install some helper scripts that are called from
> our main program.

> We want to use libexecdir so that it can be overridden with --libexecdir
> option to configure.  But, we want the default to be in
> ${prefix}/lib/${PACKAGE}/, or I guess really ${libdir}/${PACKAGE}.

Please, don't do this unless you absolutely have to.  I say this as
someone who installs lots and lots of software that uses Autoconf, and
whose software installation scripts would break on this setup because they
reset --libexecdir under the assumption that it will have it's standard
meaning of the root directory for such things, and that packages will
handle installing things into a subdirectory.  If you do this, it breaks
that assumption and your helper programs would get installed directly into
the site-wide libexecdir and make a mess.

Please instead install your programs into $(libexecdir)/$(PACKAGE) in your
Makefiles and look for them there in your source code rather than changing
the meaning of --libexecdir to mean the package-specific subdirectory.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>