Re: [Nmh-workers] 1.7's `make clean' is Overzealous.

[Ken Hornstein]

>> > (${PACKAGE_TARNAME} defaults to nmh for nmh.)
>> > Why not for libexecdir and sysconfdir, as well?
>>
>> Because /usr/share/doc has traditionally always had subdirectories under
>> it as otherwise everyone's README would clash?
>
>Same for libexecdir and sysconfdir.  Why doesn't autoconf append
>${PACKAGE_TARNAME} to their defaults?

Hm.  So ... I decided to look at what other things do.  I looked at automake;
what it does is:

AC_SUBST([pkgvdatadir], ["\${datadir}/$PACKAGE-$APIVERSION"])

And it bases a bunch of stuff off of pkgvdatadir.

Now, it doesn't seem like the GNU coding recommendations say to put
stuff in our own directory for sysconfdir; that seems completely
wrong.  There IS a recommendation to do that for libexecdir; I would be
interested to see what other packages do there.

We COULD do something like:

AC_ARG_VAR([pkglibexecdir], [Installation directory for backend programs, 
defaults to $(libexecdir)/nmh])
AS_IF([-z ${pkglibexecdir+x}], [pkglibexecdir='\${libexecdir}/nmh])

If you specify --libexec=/foo, you get programs in /foo/nmh.
If you hate that, you can do ./configure pkglibexecdir=/foo.  I might have
got some syntax wrong, but hopefully you get the idea.

--Ken