automake: Standard Directory Variables

1 
1 2.2.3 Standard Directory Variables
1 ----------------------------------
1 
1 The GNU Coding Standards also specify a hierarchy of variables to denote
1 installation directories.  Some of these are:
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1 Directory variable   Default value
1 -------------------------------------------------------
1 ‘prefix’             ‘/usr/local’
1   ‘exec_prefix’      ‘${prefix}’
1     ‘bindir’         ‘${exec_prefix}/bin’
1     ‘libdir’         ‘${exec_prefix}/lib’
1     ...
1   ‘includedir’       ‘${prefix}/include’
1   ‘datarootdir’      ‘${prefix}/share’
1     ‘datadir’        ‘${datarootdir}’
1     ‘mandir’         ‘${datarootdir}/man’
1     ‘infodir’        ‘${datarootdir}/info’
1     ‘docdir’         ‘${datarootdir}/doc/${PACKAGE}’
1   ...
1 
1    Each of these directories has a role which is often obvious from its
1 name.  In a package, any installable file will be installed in one of
1 these directories.  For instance in ‘amhello-1.0’, the program ‘hello’
1 is to be installed in BINDIR, the directory for binaries.  The default
1 value for this directory is ‘/usr/local/bin’, but the user can supply a
1 different value when calling ‘configure’.  Also the file ‘README’ will
1 be installed into DOCDIR, which defaults to
1 ‘/usr/local/share/doc/amhello’.
1 
1    As a user, if you wish to install a package on your own account, you
1 could proceed as follows:
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1      ~/amhello-1.0 % ./configure --prefix ~/usr
1      ...
1      ~/amhello-1.0 % make
1      ...
1      ~/amhello-1.0 % make install
1      ...
1 
1    This would install ‘~/usr/bin/hello’ and
1 ‘~/usr/share/doc/amhello/README’.
1 
1    The list of all such directory options is shown by ‘./configure
1 --help’.
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