I would like to define macros containing the standard paths, like this: #define BINDIR "@bindir@" It does not work due to this code in lib/autoconf/general.m4 (which appears to be predate DESTDIR support): # Installation directory options. # These are left unexpanded so users can "make install exec_prefix=/foo" # and all the variables that are supposed to be based on exec_prefix # by default will actually change. # Use braces instead of parens because sh, perl, etc. also accept them. # (The list follows the same order as the GNU Coding Standards.) AC_SUBST([bindir], ['${exec_prefix}/bin'])dnl AC_SUBST([sbindir], ['${exec_prefix}/sbin'])dnl Is there are generally approved way to work around this? The manual tells us to use -D preprocessor arguments, but I'd prefer the explicitness of defining the macros via a header file. Thanks, Florian