From:	khan AT xraylith DOT wisc DOT edu (Mumit Khan)
Subject:	Building distributions -- a small suggestion
6 Nov 1998 12:55:54 -0800 :
Message-ID:	<9811062048.AA09975.cygnus.cygwin32.developers@modi.xraylith.wisc.edu>
To:	cygwin32-developers AT cygnus DOT com

I have a small suggestion for Cygwin team when building binary net
distributions -- when configuring the native net distribution, please
use the "default" or recommended prefix and exec-prefix; when doing
a ``make install'', you can relocate the package somewhere else for
doing the packaging, so you lose nothing.  It saves a lot of hassle 
for those who install to the "default" or recommended location.

This is what I do (let's assume I'm building on native system for a
change ;-):
  
  $ <srcdir>/configure --prefix=/Cygnus/cygwin-b20 \
    --exec-prefix=/Cygnus/cygwin-b20/H-i586-cygwin32 [ ... ]

  $ make
  $ make prefix=/scratch/cygwin-b20 \
    exec_prefix=/scratch/cygwin-b20/H-i586-cygwin32 install

Now the distribution is moved to the scratch location where you can do
your packaging, but the built-in names are correct for those who install
to the default location of /Cygnus/cygwin-b20.

Why does it help? For those packages that still use hard-code names,
bison for example, it's just easier to deal with from a user perspective.

B19 source tree still had a few quirks (such as the Tk Makefiles were
not using prefix and exec_prefix correctly), but b20 has those fixed and
it does work very well.

Regards,
Mumit

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