automake-1.16: Standard Directory Variables
2.2.3 Standard Directory Variables
----------------------------------
The GNU Coding Standards also specify a hierarchy of variables to denote
installation directories. Some of these are:
Directory variable Default value
-------------------------------------------------------
‘prefix’ ‘/usr/local’
‘exec_prefix’ ‘${prefix}’
‘bindir’ ‘${exec_prefix}/bin’
‘libdir’ ‘${exec_prefix}/lib’
...
‘includedir’ ‘${prefix}/include’
‘datarootdir’ ‘${prefix}/share’
‘datadir’ ‘${datarootdir}’
‘mandir’ ‘${datarootdir}/man’
‘infodir’ ‘${datarootdir}/info’
‘docdir’ ‘${datarootdir}/doc/${PACKAGE}’
...
Each of these directories has a role which is often obvious from its
name. In a package, any installable file will be installed in one of
these directories. For instance in ‘amhello-1.0’, the program ‘hello’
is to be installed in BINDIR, the directory for binaries. The default
value for this directory is ‘/usr/local/bin’, but the user can supply a
different value when calling ‘configure’. Also the file ‘README’ will
be installed into DOCDIR, which defaults to
‘/usr/local/share/doc/amhello’.
As a user, if you wish to install a package on your own account, you
could proceed as follows:
~/amhello-1.0 % ./configure --prefix ~/usr
...
~/amhello-1.0 % make
...
~/amhello-1.0 % make install
...
This would install ‘~/usr/bin/hello’ and
‘~/usr/share/doc/amhello/README’.
The list of all such directory options is shown by ‘./configure
--help’.
Info Catalog
automake-1.16: Standard Targets
automake-1.16: Use Cases
automake-1.16: Standard Configuration Variables