-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 According to David Bruce on 4/22/2009 11:52 AM: > Anyway, how do I specify this in an autotools-based program? The > closest predefined variable seems to be "localstatedir", but the > autoconf manual says it is "$prefix/var." My Debian system doesn't > have either "/usr/var" or "/usr/local/var". Any suggestions? You are correct that you want to use localstatedir. Some of your confusion stems from the fact that there are two competing standards. Remember, the GNU Coding Standards state that a user must be able to install a package completely under $prefix (consider the case when a user installs for himself under $HOME), hence the default for localstatedir must be $prefix/var. The FHS states that you should prefer raw /var (and not /usr/var or /usr/local/var). So, anyone configuring your package that wants to use /var instead of $prefix/var has the liberty to call ./configure --localstatedir=/var. Additionally, you can create /usr/local/share/config.site to always make packages installing into a prefix of /usr/local (the default) honor your choice of localstatedir rather than having them use the autoconf default of $prefix/var. In fact, I wish more distros would do this - if a distro wants to enforce the FHS layout, then they should seriously consider installing a config.site to make it easy. - -- Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well! Eric Blake ebb9@xxxxxxx -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin) Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAknv1UQACgkQ84KuGfSFAYCN4QCgni4Tz8OFE9qMeuGY5Ks25g+O WRgAoIMy5w5bmUMBVgBXUwrrp+JLxLQ+ =m+UO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
