GNU bug report logs - #66111
is there a problem with --prefix?

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Message #16 received at 66111-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas <at> gmail.com>
To: Ambrose Kofi Laing <aklaing <at> gmail.com>
Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>, 66111-done <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#66111: is there a problem with --prefix?
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2023 16:29:15 -0700

Ambrose Kofi Laing <aklaing <at> gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Eli,
>
> Thanks for your response.  I was indeed building from the tarball.
>
> I commented out the autogen.sh call, and still the installation went into
> /usr/local, instead of to the /nonstandard/location.  So that was not the only
> problem.  After fiddling with it some more I discovered the following (sequence of errors):
>
> - One of the arguments to my configure script was: --with-tree-sitter
>
> - libtree-sitter-dev was not available on my system [First Mistake]
>
> - I was running configure inside a bash shell script, and I had not put "set
>   -e" at the top of that bash script. [Second Mistake]
>
> - As a result, configure correctly detected that libtree-sitter was missing and failed (and did not produce a Makefile).
>
> - Since I hadn't "set -e", the bash script went on ahead to run make anyway,
>   instead of stopping right there.
>
> - make did not find a Makefile, but found a GNUMakefile, and since there was
>   no Makefile, make ran configure (without arguments) to generate a Makefile,
>   and naturally this invocation of configure did not include my setting of
>   --prefix=/nonstandard/location from the previous call which failed.
>
> - Finally when the install happened, it went into /usr/local instead of
>   /nonstandard/location.
>
> - To fix, this, I have to provide  tree-sitter obviously, but the quick
>   fix was to remove --with-tree-sitter from the arguments of configure.
>
> - Once that was done, configure ran correctly and generated a Makefile, I
>   would assume including my setting of /nonstandard/location.  By this time I had removed the autogen.sh call.
>
> - Then running configure and make and make install installed correctly to
>   /nonstandard/location.
>
> So technically there is nothing wrong, but I can't help wondering if it would
> not be more helpful for the GNUMakefile to echo a message saying "I can't find
> a Makefile, please run configure yourself to generate one", instead of being
> helpful and trying to run configure for me and not quite doing it the way I
> wanted.  I know however that things like GNUMakefiles have a lot of history
> and this behavior is probably unlikely to change.
>
> Anyway, I'm all set now, thank you for your help!!

The issue seems resolved, so I'm closing the bug report.

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