On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 00:01:38 +0900
Dave Thomas <dave / pragprog.com> wrote:

> What effect does DESTDIR have on ~, the user's home directory. It's 
> easy to have rdoc look for an environment variable DESTDIR and use it 
> if set, but I don't think I want to append it to _all_ paths, as 
> ~/.rdoc won't be relativized. Otherwise I'm thinking this is probably a 
> two-line change in ri_path.rb

Hmmm...it should have no effect on a homedir...it really should have no 
effect at all other than to install the software in a different root.

If the software is compiled for /usr/local and installed elsewhere using
DESTDIR, the installing person must find a way to get it into the right 
place before running the software. When I use DESTDIR, I do this:

	make install DESTDIR=/depot/c0/pkg-0.1
	cd /depot/c0/pkg-0.1
	mv usr/local/* .
	depot

and the depot program makes links from /depot/c0/pkg-0.1/{bin,lib,man} into
/usr/local/{bin,lib,man} -- So, when I do this with ruby, ruby "thinks" it's
in /usr/local, but physically it isn't.

In other words, it's not prepended during compilation, only installation.
The package should have no trace of DESTDIR in any installed files after
installation.

Jim