From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 (2022-12-14) on finch.gentoo.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=DMARC_MISSING, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=4.0.0 Received: from canuck.com (the-gimp.canuck.com [216.248.224.12]) by chiba.3jane.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74953200B27B for ; Tue, 19 Feb 2002 22:44:22 -0600 (CST) Received: from the-gimp (the-gimp [216.248.224.12]) by canuck.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA8489369 for ; Tue, 19 Feb 2002 21:38:22 -0700 (MST) Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 21:38:21 -0700 From: Dave Lee X-Sender: davel@the-gimp To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] prefix overide portage In-Reply-To: <1014148834.1352.13.camel@kodiak.chronospace.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: gentoo-dev-admin@gentoo.org Errors-To: gentoo-dev-admin@gentoo.org X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.6 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Gentoo Linux developer list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: X-Archives-Salt: 793e9e34-b922-43aa-890e-35066ee6a67b X-Archives-Hash: 3e114710091095d83710d61863406aac Bruce A. Locke wrote: > On Tue, 2002-02-19 at 09:13, Matt Doughty wrote: > > Hi, > > I hate to start by complaining or critisizing what I consider a > > wonderful project. I'm basically a NetBSD user who is looking > > for functionality(hardware 3d support) that linux has, and > > NetBSD is lacking. I was working through the install, and ran > > into a couple oddities/annoyances. I noticed that alot of > > packages in portage statically set the install prefix. > > Yes alot of packages are setup that way. I'm of a mixed opinion if > thats a good or a bad thing. If we do decide to make it more > configurable down the road its going to require alot of ebuild touchups, > etc. Alot of configure scripts require path information to headers, > assume files are in various locations, etc. I can tell from experience > if you set a less-then-common prefix many configure scripts are going to > break on you (meaning we'd have to hack on a bunch of them :( I don't think this would actually be "hacking", I would call it something much nicer, like cleaning up. I can see the desire to set a custom install prefix, and I think that making the ebuild scripts more flexible to allow for this may prove useful in that it will make the portage system much more flexible and customizable. It should't be too much effort to let loose some scripts on the portage tree to fix --preifx=/usr to --preifx=$SOME_PREFIX_VAR where the SOME_PREFIX_VAR can be set in /etc/make.conf. In another thread Vitaly Kushneriuk said "the Gentoo way is to provide user with the maximum control that is practical" and I dont think having a custom prefix would be impractical. Anyway, just my thoughts on the subject. One thing to note is that I noticed the ebuild system is "rigid" like this in more ways than just preifx, every other configure variable is hardcoded by the ebuild author into the ebuild file, like mandir and others. In rpm systems, when you create an rpm spec, you can use %{_prefix} and %{_mandir} when you build rpms, and that gives it some flexibility. Dave