Re: pkgdatadir and program_transform_name

[Miles Bader]

"Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko" <address@hidden> writes:
> Hello, we've discovered that the "package" component in pkgdatadir
> isn't transformed through program_transform_name. In grub project we
> install some files to pkgdatadir and some distros apply the
> transformation grub->grub2 but make install still installs to
> /usr/local/share/grub and not /usr/local/share/grub2.

I don't think that's the intended use of program_transform_name -- the
latter is specifically targeted at changing the names of executables
to avoid conflicting with system executables.  It's not for "changing
the package name" in general.

[As to _why_ it works that way, here's my guess:  package names can
show up in all sorts of places (consider when it installs a library
"libblah.so"), and correctly changing _all_ of them would be kind of
difficult to do automatically.  Changing the names of only executable
files, on the other hand is very simple and historically was useful
because of GNU was writing many executables with the same names as
system executables.]

> Will it be fixed?  Is there any way to make older automake behave
> correctly?

As it doesn't seem to be broken, presumably it won't be "fixed."

If you want to change pkgdatadir, there's a configure option to do
that, of course.

-Miles

-- 
Liberty, n. One of imagination's most precious possessions.