Support for architecture-independent binaries

[Reuben Thomas]

I recently reported to bug-autoconf that it did not seem to support
architecture-independent executables:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2011-03/msg00004.html

The problem is that if one specifies --exec-prefix to be different
from --prefix in order to allow architecture-dependent executables to
co-exist in a file system, then all executables are installed to that
architecture-dependent path, whereas, in automake-speak, bin_PROGRAMS
should be installed to that path, whereas bin_SCRIPTS arguably
shouldn't.

Mike Frysinger both kindly gave me a workaround, and suggested that
this is not a shortcoming in autoconf, but rather, if anything, in the
GNU Coding Standards, which autoconf merely implements.

Hence, I write here to ask whether for projects written in languages
whose executable format is machine-independent (typically, because
it's textual), it would not make sense to support installation of
executables on a path derived from --prefix, not --exec-prefix? (It
doesn't seem necessary to invent a third prefix.)

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