Re: Autoconf: Expansion of installation directory variables

[Hans-Bernhard Broeker]

Brad Hards <address@hidden> wrote:

> One thing that did strike me as a bit strange (probable bug) is the way in 
> which directories are expanded. I expected that my Makefile would contain 
> fully expanded variables, not relative variables.

That could have been done, but would make some advanced usages hard to
achieve. E.g., in the existing scheme, you can

 make install prefix=/some/where exec_prefix=/some/where/some_platform

to install the package in a different place than it was configured
for.  Comes in very handy at times, esp. if you're using a package
manager like GNU stow.

> No problem, except that I don't need prefix or exec_prefix for
> anything. So I hadn't written them into Makefile.in, and the INSTALL
> stuff ended up as /sbin, /lib, and /include (which is not what my
> configure script says will happen, since it firmly believes in the
> prefixes).

In a nutshell: a Makefile.in without the lines

        address@hidden@
        address@hidden@ 

is buggy.  If the autoconf docs didnt point that out clearly, that
would IMHO constitute a documentation bug.

Looking around a bit I found it is documented to some extent, but in a
place you probably wouldn't look: it's in the "Porting from autoconf
1" section:

        info autoconf Upgrading "Changed Makefiles"

Of course, the canonical GNU answer would be: use automake to generate
your Makefile.in.  It knows about this and lots of other fine details
already.
-- 
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (address@hidden)
Even if all the snow were burnt, ashes would remain.