Re: [bug-gnu-libiconv] Error installing libiconv-1.13.1 on solaris 9

[Bruno Haible]

Gene LeDuc wrote in 
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnu-libiconv/2009-11/msg00014.html>:
> > Modifying the prefix variable at install time, after a different prefix has
> > already been hardwired into the shared libraries and executables, is not
> > supported. (It is also not mentioned in the INSTALL.generic file.)
> 
> We've been using stow for many years to distribute binaries to our 
> various servers and the way that I've found that works best is
>    ./configure --prefix=/opt/local
>    make
>    make install prefix=/opt/local/software/packagename
> 
> The distribution package gets put into /opt/local/software/packagename 
> and then stow links it into /opt/local, which is first in our executable 
> search path.  This works without any tweaking about 95% of the time. 
> When it needs tweaking, it just involves moving subdirectories in the 
> distribution tree up 2 levels.
> 
> I'll try DESTDIR, but it seems to me that I've tried it in the past and 
> it didn't produce stowable results.

Claudio Fontana, the author of GNU sourceinstall, recently said that:
for some packages, setting the prefix for "make install" works;
for some packages, DESTDIR works; but none of the two methods works always.
It is here that GNU sourceinstall comes in and does it right always.
(At least that's what I understood. Claudio, please correct me if I got it
wrong.)

Bruno