Re: DESTDIR vs `make install exec_prefix='

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Saturday 2009-04-18 22:06, Russ Allbery wrote:
>Russ Allbery <address@hidden> writes:
>> Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>> [1] I'm asking because Automake 1.11 will reliably not install files if
>>> their respective installation directory is empty.  This is not yet
>>> functional in Automake 1.10.2.  The test for emptiness in 1.11 will not
>>> consider $(DESTDIR) of course, only $(bindir) etc.
>>
>> I must have misunderstood this, since it sounds like it would potentially
>> break any system where each binary package is installed into a separate
>> tree.  For example, stow packages are routinely installed with:
>>
>>     ./configure --prefix=/usr/local
>>     make
>>     make install prefix=/usr/local/stow/package-version
>>
>> DESTDIR cannot easily be used here because the stow layout should have
>> simple bin, etc, lib, etc. directories directly under that directory, not
>> with an extra /usr/local in the way.
>
>Oh, you mean if the value of the *variable* is empty (following the
>thread), not the directory itself.  D'oh, sorry, that should have been
>obvious to me from context.  Never mind.  :)

No, I also thought of empty directories. Quote from above: "respective
installation directory is empty.". But the puzzling thing was that
when using DESTDIR=$foo, $foo would normally be empty anyways
(in automated build systems like lbuild/koji/etc.)