Re: gettext

[Russ Allbery]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> One cannot give a different prefix to "make" or "make install" than was
> given to "configure". That doesn't work because the prefix is hardcoded
> in various locations (as shared library runpaths, as argument to
> bindtextdomain(), as directory where to search for auxiliary executables
> etc.)

On the contrary, this absolutely must be supported.  Many of us rely on
this behavior, it's guaranteed by the GNU coding standards, and it should
work correctly.

libtool's library relinking does not break this.  libtool knows to relink
with the build-time paths in the install-time location.

DESTDIR is not a proper replacement for changing prefix at install-time.
DESTDIR assumes a simple prefix to the build-time path, which is wrong for
many existing site-wide software setups using, e.g., AFS.

There have been extensive discussions of this on the autoconf list in the
past.

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