Install Location (again)

[Philip Van Hoof]

On Thu, 2006-04-20 at 10:21 +0200, Anders F Björklund wrote:
> If one is bundling GCC with GDC, would it
> be better to have it install in two dirs:
> 
> /opt/gcc/
> /opt/gdc/

If you are bundling and then packaging it (for a specific distribution),
you should probably install it in $(prefix)/lib/gdc/ and create symlinks
to $(prefix)/bin, $(prefix)/include and $(prefix)/lib as in that case
the bundled gcc is support code for the application (gdc) itself.

For packages you really don't want to step outside of your $(prefix). So
using /opt isn't really the right thing todo (for packages).

So with $(prefix) set to /usr you get:

/usr/lib/gdc/bin/ and /usr/lib/gdc/lib/ and if possible /usr/include/
and /usr/share and then create symlinks from /usr/lib/gdc/bin/
to /usr/bin (but don't do such symlinks for files like gcc and c++ as
such symlinks would certainly conflict with existing packages).

You could do a symlink like /usr/lib/gdc/bin/gcc to /usr/bin/gdc-gcc
and /usr/lib/gdc/bin/gdb to /usr/bin/gdc-gdb . . . :-\

I don't know whether such a bundled install will be usable with existing
tools like gdb, gcc and c++. I'm guessing it's not.

> Just like it is being done now on Windows,
> when you install the Digital Mars compilers:
> 
> C:\dm\
> C:\dmd\

> Or should everything install in just one
> location, say /opt/gnu, for everything ?
> (the upside to this is that it is easy to
> add e.g. GNU Make and GDB too, later on...)
> 
> Under each dir, there would be the usual:
> /opt/gnu/bin/*
> /opt/gnu/lib/*
> /opt/gnu/include/*
> /opt/gnu/share/*
> 
> 
> For a binary release, I'm leaning towards
> using just one single $PREFIX (=/opt/gnu),
> since this approach seems to have worked
> good for the Fink and DarwinPorts projects ?
> 
> One less set of PATHs to set up, as well...
> (to find the executables and the libraries)
> 
> This was assuming that the regular /usr
> won't work, otherwise that would be the
> preferred location - if the rest of the
> system tools and libraries are "usable".
> 
> For the general case, I think we'll need
> to bundle the *same* version of GNU C/C++
> 
> 
> Thoughts ?
> --anders