Re: Fine-grained install control

[Keith MARSHALL]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote, quoting me:
>> you could just inline the assignment:
>> 
>>   mandir=`echo $mandir | sed s?^${prefix}?/usr/local?`
>>
>> in your configure.ac.
>
> Which will make your package blatantly incompatible with the old
> version of the GCS;

Eh?  The OP's intent may not be strictly GCS compliant in any case,
but I fail to see how this would make it any less so.

> and will stop working once your package uses Autoconf-2.60 which
> supports the newer version.

Sure.  I did say the the suggestion was `off-the-cuff'; that means
it's quick and dirty, and by no means likely to be future proof.
It's compatible with autoconf <= 2.59, (at least >= 2.50, and maybe
even some earlie versions); looks like it will break in 2.60, but
this is always a peril when hacking below the surface, to achieve
something out of the ordinary.

> Why not *just* *use* --mandir?

Yep; that's what I would be inclined to do myself, but the OP
*explicitly* said that he wanted to avoid this.  Perhaps the issues
this sort of hacking raises will help to convince him that just
using `--mandir=...' is a significantly more robust option.

> Why not a script that invokes `configure --mandir=... $@'

Because it doesn't conform to the standard `./configure && make ...'
build paradigm?

> If that's too much, why not add a setting to your and your preferred
> users' config.site file(s), so they don't have to remember this?

How the heck do you, as a developer, possibly hope to control what
your end users put in *their* config.site files?

Cheers,
Keith.