Re: AW: prefix

[Keith Marshall]

On Friday 02 December 2005 5:01 pm, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> Keith Marshall <address@hidden> writes:
> > BTW, I don't think ac_default_prefix is officially documented
>
> But AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT is.
>
>  -- Macro: AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT (PREFIX)
>      Set the default installation prefix to PREFIX instead of
>      `/usr/local'.

Indeed it is.  But IMHO, use of AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT should be strongly 
discouraged -- it imposes a default via the distributed configure script, 
which is likely to come as a surprise, perhaps even as a shock, to end users.
More crucially, AIUI it overrides any local default set in a config.site, so 
any configure script using it will be comprehensively broken, for a default 
Win32 build on MinGW/MSYS.

My suggestion was much less cavalier -- it merely sets a default which would 
be local to the host on which configure is executed;  it is also the 
technique I use myself, on my Win32 box, to get a local default prefix with 
native Win32 semantics, (which many packages require), without the need to 
explicitly specify this individually for every package, or to hack individual 
configure scripts, to make them set an appropriate default:

   ac_default_prefix=`cd /usr/local; pwd -W`

Regards,
Keith.