Re: Default values for infodir and mandir [WAS: Re: [autoconf] doc dirs?]

[Ralf Corsepius]

Guido Draheim wrote:
> 
> Earnie Boyd wrote:
> >
> > Rüdiger Kuhlmann wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi!
> > >
> > -8<-
> > >  AC_SUBST([infodir],        ['${prefix}/info'])dnl
> > > +AC_SUBST([docdir],         ['${datadir}/doc'])dnl
> > >  AC_SUBST([mandir],         ['${prefix}/man'])dnl
> > >
> >
> > In my simplistic mind having three places for documentation isn't
> > logical.  I can understand leaving switches for infodir and mandir in
> > place for backward compatibility but shouldn't there values default to
> > ['$(docdir)/info'] and ['$(docdir)/man'] instead.  IIRC this is what the
> > FHS recommends.
> >
> 
> IIRC, the FHS recommends to move mandir and infodir into $datadir/(man|info)
> instead of the current ac-default for $prefix/(man|info).

Nope. It does not even mention the words datadir or docdir.
grep datadir fhs.txt
grep docdir fhs.txt

It mandates: 
/usr/share/[man|info] for OS-vendor supplied packages
/usr/local/[man|info] for local packages
and reserves
/opt/[man|info] for "add-on" packages.

It also mandates /usr/share/doc for docs of OS-vendor supplied
packages, but does not seem to cover handling of installing docs for
packages to other locations nor does it cover handling of docs below
/usr/share/doc (Eg. RH typically uses /usr/share/doc/<package>,
while SuSE uses /usr/share/doc/packages/<package>).

It also does not seem to cover "package-wise" installation
(--prefix=<somewhere>/<package>) at all.

> 
> Since we are at it, are there plans to change the default for infodir
> and datadir from $prefix to $datadir ?
IMHO, you are missing some essential points here:
autoconf is not a packaging-tool nor a Linux-specific tool.
Consequently whatever default is choosen it will always be wrong
somewhere. 

So I do not see any advantage of any change to the current practice.

Ralf