ports and DESTDIR (was: Second "RFC" on pkg-data idea for ports)

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 6:54 PM +0200 4/15/04, Jens Schweikhardt wrote:
>Garance,
>
># Another complication is that many ports include cross-references
># to themselves or other programs "on the system".  If you install
># to /otherhost/usr/local/bin, then those ports will embed that
># installation path in the files they install.
>
>No, not when it's done right. PREFIX is not DESTDIR.

Sigh.

Of course it works when it is done right.  EVERYTHING works when
it is "done right".  But if the original program does not handle
this particular issue correctly, and I damn well know some humans
have written programs that do not do understand DESTDIR, then it
is more work for the port-developer to do.  For those few programs
which embed paths to other programs, you don't just have to fix
the Makefile, you have to fix the actual program.

All I meant was that sometimes there is even more work to do, work
which porters are not currently doing.  I *have* needed to do this
work for some programs in the past.  It used to come up a lot here
at RPI because we run /afs, and we have to install programs into
the "read/write" volume, but the programs need to embed pointers
to the "read-only" (replicated) volumes.  Please stop suggesting
that it can not happen.

My main mistake in my earlier babbling was to say "many ports"
include cross-references.  Obviously the vast majority of ports
do not embed pathnames to any other programs, and thus this issue
does not come up for them.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu