| On Fri, Sep 01, 2000 at 09:38:28PM -0600, Richard Stallman wrote:
| : So prefix=/usr leads to syconfidir=/etc, but prefix=/usr/gnu (not my
| : idea) leads to sysconfdir=/usr/gnu/config? Ugh.
| :
| : This nonuniformity is precisely the intent. When prefix is a
| : subdirectory of /usr, such as /usr/local, people are likely to be
| : unhappy with installing the configuration files into /etc.
| : But when prefix is /usr, that means the programs are being installed
| : as first-class citizens and their config files ought to go in /etc.
|
| This seems to me to be different kinds of software installations.
| Maybe some option and environment variable could be used to decide
| which install type is desired?
|
| ./configure --prefix=/usr [--install-type=user]
| => /usr/config
|
| ./configure --prefix=/usr --install-type=system
| => /etc
|
| env AC_INSTALL_TYPE=system ./configure --prefix=/usr
| => /etc
|
| I'm not happy with the choice of option names above, but I think the
| general idea could be explored.
Again, I think the idea is good, but we should not go this way.
Yet configure has too many options. `configure' fundamentally has to
remain extremely simple, with a perfectly predictable behavior. And
the predictive algorithm must remains as simple as possible.
