id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,milestone,component,version,severity,resolution,keywords,cc
4934,Please support DESTDIR/--destdir for installation into a virtual root,Roger Leigh <rleigh@…>,,"If you've read the GNU coding standards or used GNU automake, as examples, these (and other) tools and standards specify a DESTDIR (destination directory) for ""make install"".  The purpose is to separate the installation prefix/exec-prefix/libdir/includedir locations from the root where they actually get installed.

As an example, if I configure with --prefix=/usr and libdir is ${prefix}/lib, ""make install"" will install into ${prefix}/lib.

However, if I do ""make DESTDIR=/tmp/tmpdir install"", then installation will be into ""/tmp/tmpdir/${prefix}/lib"".  It's actually installing into ${DESTDIR}${libdir}, where DESTDIR is empty by default.

Why is this needed?  It's mainly used for packaging purposes, because if I want to make .deb or .rpm packages, or even just a .tar.gz of the built files, I don't want to install onto the base system, I want to install into a temporary directory location (virtual root) so I can then package up the files.

Now, I could use ""--prefix=/tmp/tmpdir/usr"", and this is in fact what Debian is currently doing.  However, if I want to actually use the value of ${prefix}, it should be ""/usr"" and it's actually set to ""/tmp/tmpdir/usr"", which is obviously wrong.

I would like to suggest that an additional bjam option --destdir would allow one to do this:

{{{
  bjam --prefix=/usr --destdir=/tmp/tmpdir install
}}}

rather than the incorrect

{{{
  bjam --prefix=/tmp/tmpdir/usr install
}}}

which is currently the only possible method to use.

This is related to bug #1094 because this will insert the directory locations into the generated .pc file.  If you bootstrap with the DESTDIR included in the --prefix, you'll end up with buggy .pc files containing the wrong locations.  Using --destdir means the configured locations are always correct.


Many thanks,
Roger",Bugs,closed,To Be Determined,Building Boost,Boost 1.44.0,Problem,duplicate,,