Why is KDE installing in LOCALBASE; not X11BASE?

[Pat Lashley]

--On Monday, September 22, 2003 18:19:01 -0500 Jeremy Messenger 
<mezz7 at cox.net> wrote:

> Yep.. I am the maintainer for www/linux-opera and I was expected that KDE
> is in /usr/X11R6 for the icon stuff, because of a lot of GUI apps are
> install in /usr/X11R6. I never get the feedback about linux-opera with
> KDE, until last week I found out that KDE is install in /usr/local (I
> don't use KDE and never check on KDE's prefix until now). I will have to
> change from ${X11BASE} to ${LOCALBASE} to put the Opera icon in the
> ${LOCALBASE}/share/applnk for KDE.
>
> It is how it got me wondering and curious about hier(7) to see if it
> needs to clean or else. :-)

Just as a historical note, the reason that many X11 apps try to install
into the X11(R6) hierarchy is because most X11 apps used to be built
using imake and Imakefiles.  Imake was designed primarily for use with
the apps bundled with the X11 distribution.  As a consequence of short-
sighted design, it is incredibly painful to try to configure a set of
Imakefile templates that put things anywhere else.

Imake is one of the reasons that X11 has earned the designation
"Complex non-solutions to simple non-problems."



-Pat