Re: finding datadir from executable

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Mon, Sep 06, 2004 at 01:42:21PM -0700, Bruce Korb wrote:
> Akim Demaille wrote:
> > 
> > >>> "Nicholas" == Nicholas R Markham <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> >  > I recently decided to try to apply the suggestion mentioned in section 
> > 17.5 of
> >  > the autoconf manual - namely, to hardcode only the relative path from 
> > prefix to
> >  > datadir (or maybe from bindir to datadir) and try to determine prefix at
> >  > runtime.  However, I'm not sure how to determine prefix at runtime.  Can 
> > anyone
> >  > give me an example of how they did it?  Thanks.
> > 
> > Bruno Haible has a complete solution IIRC.  See GNU Gettext.
> 
> Hi Akim!
> 
> That, unfortunately, is too convoluted to figure out without real study.
> Without a clear example, I simply find the full, real path of the executable
> and presume that the standard ../share/${program}/ is correct.  Probably
> an illuminating example would make life easier.....  :-)

If a GPL'd solution is OK, I recommend libiberty.  I moved GCC's
make_relative_prefix into libiberty some time ago because I kept
needing this functionality elsewhere.

You give it argv[0], BINDIR, and OTHERDIR; it computes the relative
path between bindir and otherdir, finds your application in $PATH or
similar, and works out the likely location of otherdir.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz