On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 12:06 +0100, Duncan Coutts wrote:
On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 09:22 +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
Duncan Coutts wrote:
I am trying to understand the reason we have so many --dir flags to configure. I'd prefer to remove what appear to be duplicates and add some more dir overrides for specific file types (like docs).
We currently have:
--libdir= and --libsubdir= --datadir= and --datasubdir=
Hmm, I remember going through several iterations of the design here before ending up with --libsubdir. I can't remember all the rationale now (darn, wish I'd written it down somehwere). Did you check the mailing list archives?
Yes, looking back at some patch descriptions and the thread on the libraries list from Oct 2005 titled: "Cabal: bindir/libdir/datadir" the rationale becomes clearer.
So the split between dir and subdir is for compatibility with autoconf, that is it allows users to say just --libdir=/usr/lib64 like they would with autoconf and end up with /usr/lib64/$pkgid/$compiler.
Just for reference here's autoconf's full list (it's big): --prefix=PREFIX install architecture-independent files in PREFIX [/usr/local] --exec-prefix=EPREFIX install architecture-dependent files in EPREFIX [PREFIX] --bindir=DIR user executables [EPREFIX/bin] --sbindir=DIR system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin] --libexecdir=DIR program executables [EPREFIX/libexec] --sysconfdir=DIR read-only single-machine data [PREFIX/etc] --sharedstatedir=DIR modifiable architecture-independent data [PREFIX/com] --localstatedir=DIR modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var] --libdir=DIR object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib] --includedir=DIR C header files [PREFIX/include] --oldincludedir=DIR C header files for non-gcc [/usr/include] --datarootdir=DIR read-only arch.-independent data root [PREFIX/share] --datadir=DIR read-only architecture-independent data [DATAROOTDIR] --infodir=DIR info documentation [DATAROOTDIR/info] --localedir=DIR locale-dependent data [DATAROOTDIR/locale] --mandir=DIR man documentation [DATAROOTDIR/man] --docdir=DIR documentation root [DATAROOTDIR/doc/gtk2hs] --htmldir=DIR html documentation [DOCDIR] --dvidir=DIR dvi documentation [DOCDIR] --pdfdir=DIR pdf documentation [DOCDIR] --psdir=DIR ps documentation [DOCDIR] See also: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Installation-Directory... http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/standards/Directory-Variables.ht... They have some historical cruft we can ignore, like the --datarootdir and --oldincludedir. Note that the default autoconf docdir includes the package name. Additionally, automake supports installing files into any of these with an additional packagename subdir.