[gnutls-dev] Guile related 'make install' failure

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org> writes:

> After making the last release, I tried 'make install', but it failed:

> This doesn't look right to me, 'make install' should never write outside
> of $prefix by default; packages that do that is rather annoying at sites
> with read-only /usr trees that use AFS or similar.

Agreed.

That said, Guile files must go in a directory that is in Guile's "load
path".  The one directory that is known to be in Guile's load path is
`$(GUILE_SITE)', hence the `GUILE_SITE_DIR' M4 macro.

If Guile files goes to some arbitrary directory, e.g.,
`$(pkgdatadir)/guile', then Guile simply won't be able to find them,
unless the user manually updates their `GUILE_LOAD_PATH' environment
variable or add `-L' switches when they run `guile'.

  (To test whether Guile finds the relevant files, just type:

     $ guile
     guile> (use-modules (gnutls) (gnutls extra))

   If no error message gets displayed, then everything's alright.)

Thus, the patch doesn't look right to me.

Now, I'm well aware that this `$(GUILE_SITE)' thing is annoying.  There
were attempts in the past to improve on this on the Guile side but none
of them were fruitful.

AFAICS, Perl, Python and Emacs also have a fixed central `site'
directory (at least, that's how files are laid out in Debian).  Now, if
you have a better idea, I'm all ears.  ;-)

Thanks,
Ludovic.