> > Part two, designating a single directory as the site directory is not > > going to be liked by everybody. If Autoconf is installed as part of "the > > system" under /usr, many people won't like to put AC files belonging to > > "locally" installed packages somewhere under /usr/share or whereever it is > > you want to put the site directory. > > I'm not sure that I understand this objection. It's a very common > strategy to have a system-wide directory for things like this, as per > the many examples we've discussed (header files in /usr/local/include, > CPAN modules in Perl's site_perl directory, etc). As long as the path > to the site macro directory is configurable when autoconf is > installed, I don't see how this would be much of a limitation.
I've been following this conversation sort of from the sidelines... but I guess I can comment on this without being an autoconf expert. :-) Take this scenario: say I work on a large corporate box that has lots of different users on it, most of whom I don't know. The administrator has previously installed autoconf in /usr/local and has configured the site-wide directory as /usr/local/whatever during installation. I would like to add some "site-wide" macros for some projects I'm working on, projects that no one else on the box has anything to do with. In other words, the macros are "site-wide" from my perspective, but not from the perspective of the other 300+ users on the box, who don't even know about them. I, being a mere peon, cannot write to that /usr/local/whatever directory. I would have to go through a drawn-out change-request process to get someone else to put files in that directory. Maybe it would get done within in a week, if the powers-that-be trust my macros enough to put them in there (and if they even know what I'm talking about, *sigh*). This is a pain, and it really nails my productivity. I think it would work better to choose a scheme that would let a given autoconf user specify some list of site-wide directories for their own use, with the default being to use just the /usr/local/whatever directory specified at installation. This makes the default case easy but provides some flexibility for use by people who don't administer their own box all of the time (like me). KEN -- Kenneth J. Pronovici <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Personal Homepage: http://www.skyjammer.com/~pronovic/ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
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