Well, your test in configure seems to me the best way to solve this
issue. After looking at the dpkg man page and doing some tests,
it seems like "--root" and "--admindir" are options that must be
passed each time you call dpkg (or must be given in a default options
configuration file). For instance, if you want to install
and register the package "pdbv" under the "/strange" hierarchy, you
use
that options. However, the default directory is always /var/lib/dpkg.
I think that asking the user to type the directory is the best
way to allow pdbv to be used in systems in which there is no
/var/lib/dpkg (I wonder if there is such system).
If someone install dpkg by hand, from the source, with /usr/local as
prefix, or /usr, he will maybe get something like
/usr/local/var/lib/dpkg or /usr/var/lib/dpkg.
So it seems possible but, in any case, it's weird.
Cheers
--
Mathieu Roy
http://savannah.gnu.org/users/yeupou
http://yeupou.coleumes.org
http://gpg.coleumes.org (GPG Key)
