Apologies for the delayed response - I've been out of town - and It looks like Paul is already on the right track. Johannes: I believe the GIT_EXEC_PATH snipped that you listed is not incorrect. It's defined to "gitexecdir_SQ", and RUNTIME_PREFIX expects (and enforces, as you snipped) that this is a relative path in Makefile. On non-RUNTIME_PREFIX builds, it should still be the absolute path, as this is how Git self-locates, so using "gitexecdir_SQ" there makes sense to me. So: RUNTIME_PREFIX=No, gitexecdir_SQ is absolute, GIT_EXEC_PATH is absolute, used to find Git: https://github.com/git/git/blob/ccdcbd54c4475c2238b310f7113ab3075b5abc9c/exec-cmd.c#L281 RUNTIME_PREFIX=YesPlease, gitexecdir_SQ is relative, GIT_EXEC_PATH is relative and used to identify the search root of the Git installation: https://github.com/git/git/blob/ccdcbd54c4475c2238b310f7113ab3075b5abc9c/exec-cmd.c#L40 The dual-use is confusing, and it took me a few to walk back through how it is employed in each scenario. For clarity's sake, it may be worth defining two variables and making one explicitly relative, but I think it is functional as-is. Paul: I used "config.mak" to configure RUNTIME_PREFIX when I used it to the same effect: https://chromium.googlesource.com/infra/infra/+/ca729b99c1f82665b634ef2ff69d93c97dfcda99/recipes/recipe_modules/third_party_packages/git.py#78 I forewent autoconf because I was concerned that the option was too obscure and the configuration too nuanced to be worth adding via flag, as RUNTIME_PREFIX requires some degree of path alignment and is fairly special-case. If you prefer autoconf, though, it sounds like a good thing to add, and I'm happy that you are finding the feature useful! Cheers, -Dan On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 5:00 AM Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi Paul, > > On Thu, 5 Jul 2018, Paul Smith wrote: > > > On Wed, 2018-07-04 at 13:22 +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote: > > > > Basically what happens is that I run configure with > > > > --prefix=/my/install/path --with-gitconfig=etc/gitconfig > > > > --with-gitattributes=etc/gitattributes. > > > > > > > > Then I run make with RUNTIME_PREFIX=YesPlease. > > > > > > Ah. In Git for Windows, we do not use configure. I *think* this > > > points to an incompatibility of the RUNTIME_PREFIX feature with our > > > autoconf support, and this is a grand opportunity for you to step in > > > and help. > > > > > > Essentially, what you will want to do is to implement a new configure > > > option --with-runtime-prefix that then prevents the autoconf script > > > from munging the relative paths in the way it does. > > > > FYI I was able to get this to work by overriding variables on the make > > command line, like this: > > > > make ... RUNTIME_PREFIX=YesPlease \ > > gitexecdir=libexec/git-core \ > > template_dir=share/git-core/templates \ > > sysconfdir=etc > > > > I agree a new autoconf option would be much simpler to use. I'll think > > about it as I happen to have some some experience in these areas ;) ... > > I look forward to reviewing this... > > > but time is limited of course :). > > Yep. Same here ;-) > > Ciao, > Johannes