Ben Finney wrote: > > I'm not sure exactly what you mean by “do like autoconf”. Can you > please describe exactly what behaviour you are envisaging, so that we > don't all have a different interpretation of what “like autoconf” > means ?
Not autoconf, but the whole autotools suite (I think you need to use automake at least to do what I have in mind). The idea is deceptively simple: when you use ./configure, it gives you many options wrt paths: --bindir=DIR user executables [EPREFIX/bin] --sbindir=DIR system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin] --libexecdir=DIR program executables [EPREFIX/libexec] --sysconfdir=DIR read-only single-machine data [PREFIX/etc] --sharedstatedir=DIR modifiable architecture-independent data [PREFIX/com] --localstatedir=DIR modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var] --libdir=DIR object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib] --includedir=DIR C header files [PREFIX/include] --oldincludedir=DIR C header files for non-gcc [/usr/include] --datarootdir=DIR read-only arch.-independent data root [PREFIX/share] --datadir=DIR read-only architecture-independent data [DATAROOTDIR] --infodir=DIR info documentation [DATAROOTDIR/info] --localedir=DIR locale-dependent data [DATAROOTDIR/locale] --mandir=DIR man documentation [DATAROOTDIR/man] --docdir=DIR documentation root [DATAROOTDIR/doc/libsndfile] --htmldir=DIR html documentation [DOCDIR] --dvidir=DIR dvi documentation [DOCDIR] --pdfdir=DIR pdf documentation [DOCDIR] --psdir=DIR ps documentation [DOCDIR] By default, they are laid out more or less like the FHS (and again, the detail do not matter: you can change them), BUT, it is extremely flexible. The only burden for the developer is to say which files go in which category, which he has to do anyway. You could think that because it is autoconf, it is not flexible for other OSes (windows), but with this, you can have extremely different ways of packaging, which are 100 % against the FHS spirit. I gave the gobolinux example, which does package every software in its own directory, a bit like a super-stow if you know stow. The thing is, I am sure the majority of softwares developers never think about this for their own software, still it is possible: it really come for free for the developer. And for the distributor, it is extremely easy (and self-documented). You could have different defaults on different platforms (windows comes to mind). cheers, David _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig