Re: gettext

[Russ Allbery]

Bob Proulx <address@hidden> writes:

>> DESTDIR is prepended to the runtime path.  It can't be an arbitrarily
>> different path.
>> 
>> If I built something to use /afs/example.com/sw/@sys/usr/local as its
>> prefix and want to install in /afs/.example.com/sw/@sys/usr/local, which
>> is a common thing to want to do with AFS since the former is a read-only
>> path and the later is a read/write path, I can't do that with DESTDIR.

> Can you give a concrete example of a package for which this does not
> work?

Yes.  This does not work in any package that implements DESTDIR that I've
seen.  GNU fileutils is a fine example of a case where this doesn't work.
Thankfully, GNU fileutils correctly supports setting prefix at
install-time.

> As a concrete example of it working, get the GNU fileutils.  Then do
> this.

>   ./configure --prefix=/usr
>   make
>   mkdir -p /var/tmp/fileutils-image
>   make DESTDIR=/var/tmp/fileutils-image install

Yes, I understand how DESTDIR works.  This installs the package into
/var/tmp/fileutils-image/usr.

Now, how do I take something built for /afs/example.com/sw/@sys/usr/local
and install into /afs/.example.com/sw/@sys/usr/local?  Obviously, I can
install into /var/tmp/afs/example.com/sw/@sys/usr/local and then use rsync
to copy it or something, but that's kind of obnoxious, when with setting
prefix at install time I can install directly where I want things without
having to do any additional fiddling about.

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