Re: keeping $exec-prefix et al unexpanded

[Ralf Corsepius]

Am Mit, 2003-03-05 um 14.34 schrieb Philip Willoughby:
> I've been thinking (shock!), and it seems to me that it wouldn't break
> anything majorly if we did expand all the $prefix-dependant variables.  The
> reason being, practically everyone uses automake these days, and automake
> defines all installation paths to be prefixed by $DESTDIR, which is empty
> by default.
> 
> Since the only reason I've been given to keep the variables unexpanded is
> so that you can do:
> 
> ./configure --prefix=/usr
> make
> make prefix=/tmp/usr install
> cd /tmp
> tar cfz binary-tarball.tgz usr
> 
> this seems to me to be a bit of a redundant feature.
No, it is not redundant. 

There exist situations where DESTDIR is not applicable, typically when
configuration directories and installation directories do not match,
e.g. when sharing files between different architectures in a network.

Ralf