This layout isn't very friendly with 'configure --prefix=/usr/local'.
I would like to adopt a more Berkeley-ish layout. Specifically, moving
.../etc/* to .../etc/nmh/*, and .../lib/* to .../libexec/nmh/*. This
more closely follows current filesystem layouts, and for those which
don't, we still avoid spamming their existing directories. And in the
default case, under /usr/local/nmh, nothing is upset internally.
Other than people who have paths hardcoded for /usr/local/nmh/lib into
their programs. We should coordinate with exmh and MH-E people to make
sure that doesn't break things. Maybe we can even get Valdis to crank
out a new release of exmh?
Our backend programs in lib going to libexec, yeah, that's pretty
standard. But I'm torn about making things with a "nmh" prefix as a
default (e.g., etc/nmh). I'd rather move toward us behaving like every
other autoconf package. And I guess I'm fine with us "spamming"
directories like /usr/local; our uninstall target works fine, and a lot
of people are using a packaging system anyway. Power users can override
this behavior easily with autoconf switches. Of course, the counter-point
is that you can get back the old behavior easily as well. I don't have
a good counter-argument to that, I will admit.
My only concern is with where the manpages get installed. Currently we
put them under .../share/man/. That seems to be the autoconf default
location. But for most of the systems I have access to, versions of man
that adapt their search path based on $PATH search on ../man for every
.../bin they find in $PATH. So I'm wondering if it might not be better
to install under $prefix/man rather than $prefix/share/man by default?
We might have to tune this in configure.ac, but I think installing in
.../man will work for most OSes.
I kinda thought nowadays that ../share/man was relatively standard. But
I see what you mean about "man" commands supporting looking in people's
paths, and I wasn't aware of that.
I'd be happy with a --with-traditional-paths flag to autoconf that put
things back the "old" way. I'm less happy about the "new" paths not
conforming to autoconf standards, but I don't have super strong feelings
about it.
--Ken
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