Jim Meyering wrote: > Zube wrote: >> A newly installed CentOS 5.3 x86_64 machine, with a mostly unpopulated >> /usr/local. gzip has never been installed under /usr/local, the >> only gzip that exists is the local system one (/usr/bin/gzip, a link >> to /bin/gzip). >> >> I run: >> >> ./configure >> gmake >> gmake install >> >> and it drops the install in /usr/bin. Starting on line 19611 of the >> configure script, the prefix is changed based on where gzip is >> currently installed. This is surprising and annoying behavior. >> The configure script is explicit: >> >> ./configure --help >> >> *** >> >> Installation directories: >> --prefix=PREFIX install architecture-independent files in PREFIX >> [/usr/local] >> >> By default, `make install' will install all the files in >> `/usr/local/bin', `/usr/local/lib' etc. >> >> *** >> >> Thanks to this errant behavior (off the top of my head, I know of no >> other GNU program that does this), I'm going to have a bit of manual >> undo to do. I can force the build to do what I want with: >> >> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local >> >> but dear me, I shouldn't have to. >> >> Could you please either document this behavior and change the output of >> ./configure --help or remove the check completely? It makes no sense >> to change the default install location based on where gzip is found. > > Thanks for the report. > That is indeed surprising, and IMHO undesirable. > However, the logs suggest that gzip's installation process has been > working that way (using AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM(gzip), now in configure.ac) > for more than 10 years, so removing that "feature" would probably cause > more harm than good. > > The only alternative I can imagine would be to make configure > fail if --prefix=/something is not specified. And I'm sure some > would object to that, too. So maybe the status quo is best.
On second thought (and upon a prod from Karl Berry, thanks ;-), I've gone ahead and made the change after all. The existing behavior is just too non-intuitive. >From 7ef3730c1f88b398d9633eed877a81d46bc5f16b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jim Meyering <meyer...@redhat.com> Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:21:21 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] build: do not use AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM * configure.ac: Do not use "AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM(gzip)". It would induce behavior that is so surprising that it is probably universally considered to be buggy, these days. Reported by Zube in http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.gzip.bugs/273 --- configure.ac | 2 -- 1 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac index 174a59e..c568c02 100644 --- a/configure.ac +++ b/configure.ac @@ -109,7 +109,5 @@ AC_TYPE_SIGNAL AC_TYPE_SIZE_T AC_TYPE_OFF_T -AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM(gzip) - AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile doc/Makefile lib/Makefile]) AC_OUTPUT -- 1.6.5.1.281.g7c7f7
