[Nix-dev] Re: --infodir and --mandir

[Peter Simons]

Hi Ludovic,

 > How come their ‘configure’ script uses the “wrong” locations?

the most common problem seems to be that the packages are old, or
rather, their configure scripts are. Tools like Screen or RCS didn't
have major releases in years, so their build systems were written at a
time before Autotool variables like $(infodir) and $(mandir) were
commonly available.

The generic builder even recognizes packages that use $out/{info,man},
but it can't do much about it except move the directories into the
proper place and replace the "bad" paths with symbolic links. The
benefit is that we can rely on the documentation to exist at the
expected locations -- $out/shared/{info,man} --, but still I'd rather
not have the top-level paths to begin with.

Take care,
Peter