[Xapian-discuss] problem compiling static python bindings

[Olly Betts]

On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 12:56:19PM +0000, James Aylett wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 07:59:35PM -0800, Noah Hoffman wrote:
> 
> > abspath --> /nfs/aesop01/hw11/d99/labmed1/admin
> 
> What happens if you configure as this absolute path for --prefix,
> which seems to be available from the web server as well as from your
> shell server?

Even if it isn't available under the same path on both, you can
configure for the prefix it will be running under, and then install
it into a "staging area", e.g. if the webserver path is /web/path
and the place to install to is /install/path then:

./configure --prefix=/web/path
make install DESTDIR=/home/olly/staged-install

That will install files to:

/home/olly/staged-install/web/path

Then you can move the installed tree to where it can be used:

mv /home/olly/staged-install/web/path/* /install/path

DESTDIR is commonly used by packaging scripts which want to install
to a staging area for packaging (e.g. for Debian packages or RPMs).

DESTDIR should work for most autoconf/automake-based build systems.
Automatically generated rules will just work, but sometimes maintainers
write custom rules which omit $(DESTDIR).

Cheers,
    Olly