Hello,
while packaging XEmacs 21.4.4 I ran into some difficulties because:
1. datadir and libdir do not work like described in the documentation:
I am running ./configure with `--datadir=/usr/share --libdir=/usr/lib'.
INSTALL indicates that the directories
| /usr/lib/xemacs-21.4.4/<architecture>
| /usr/share/xemacs-21.4.4/lisp
| /usr/share/xemacs-21.4.4/etc
will be created. Indeed the <architecture> dir will be created under
the datadir
| /usr/share/xemacs-21.4.4/<architecture>
This means the --libdir behavior or the INSTALL-file is wrong
2. mandir is being set in an unusual manner:
The FHS requires to put man-pages under /usr/share/man. Therefore I
have to change the mandir variable under Linux. XEmacs defines it in
the Makefile.in.in as
| mandir=@mandir@
| manext=.1
and in configure.in as
| mandir='${prefix}/man/man1'
This is redundantly (when moving pages from section 1 to section x,
both manext and mandir must be changed) and unusually for GNU/Linux[1]
Although it is not absolutely necessarily to fix this, I have attached
a patch changing the mandir-behavior.
3. Common ./configure scripts understand more options:
./configure scripts following the GNU/Linux standard understand
options like --sbindir, --libexecdir, --sysconfdir...
Supporting these options (without an action behind) makes it more
easy to build XEmacs with general rules. Current XEmacs fails to
build with them.
Enrico
Footnotes:
[1] see standards.info/Directory Variables. There mandir is suggested
to be ${prefix}/man without the trailing manext.