Re: libexecdir/datadir used incorrectly

[Bruce Korb]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> What scares me more than anything else is that files installed by a
> package start moving from release to release, hide in subdirectories,
> etc.  It is IMHO more important that a package sticks to some
> reasonable convention than to have all packages agree on some uniform
> standard.

There is a fix.  http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/releases/
and also:        http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/pkgconfig

Until it is ubiquitous, there is the tried-and-true ${packagename}-config
scripts (with non-uniform options, of course).  It is really clear from
this discussion that there is no clear understanding of how all these
names work together (or don't).  It would be nice to see clarity.  In
creating clarity, there should be some objectives:

1.  do not break existing practice, even if it is inconsistent.  In other
    words, "old stuff" should be aliases for whatever the "new stuff" is
    for at least the better part of a decade.

2.  The "new stuff" should be distinctly named with the names having
    obvious meaning and consistent spelling.  i.e.  --datadir=/foo
    in configure does much the same thing as ``make datadir=/bar''
    (differences being allowed since the make variation is used as
    a staging area and the configure variation specifies an intended
    final installation directory)

3.  I think new stuff should play nice with "pkg-config".  From that,
    packages can tell their clients where various bits and pieces
    reside, using:  pkg-config --variable=some_export_name ${packagename}

This latter allows a package to decide, for example, that versioned
directories are useful and to start using them.  And while I'm thinking
on this subject, doesn't it belong in an auto-tool list (e.g. automake
or autoconf or even libtool)?

Cheers - Bruce