"--prefix /usr/local/racket-5.1" (for example) has been working great
for my clients and me for years, and I hope that it continues to work in
exactly the same way.
Note that originally I started building from source because the
distribution ".deb" or ".rpm" build didn't include the CGC binaries on
which one of my clients depends. Now that we've been building from
source, the "--prefix" has been handy for letting us have multiple
versions installed, and for having them follow a consistent naming
convention (with less chance for user error in having the correct
version number in the pathname, since we're never manually moving the
tree around nor manually renaming it).
That said, I think that most people building from source are probably
doing it because they're a Racket core developer or they're playing with
the latest from Git. Not because they need CGC and also have a highly
controlled production environment that is strict about version numbers.
So I defer to Eli on what's the best way for most people to install from
source.
--
http://www.neilvandyke.org/
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