[Plplot-devel] install now puts files in /usr/lib regardless of prefix

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

OCTAVE_M_DIR = /usr/share/octave/site/m
OCTAVE_OCT_DIR = /usr/lib/octave/2.0.16.92/oct/i386-pc-linux-gnu

Rafael, this is a bad result.  It means nobody can try plplot without having
root privilege, and once you have made such an install it is non-trivial to
un-install.  (With my normal prefix of /usr/local/plplot_at,

rm -rf /usr/local/plplot_at/*

is a wonderfully simple way to uninstall....;-)) Also, ignoring the install
prefix seems to go against the design philosophy of autotools where every
effort seems to be made to honor the installation prefix.

Please change to

$prefix/share/octave/site/m
and
$prefix/lib/octave/2.0.16.92/oct/i386-pc-linux-gnu

at least. (I am being over-specific about the version here which I presume
is fully configured in your present scheme.)

Something similar is done for the python packages where the python
plplot-related modules and extension modules are installed in

$prefix/lib/python2.1/site-packages/

(I am being over-specific about the version here which is fully configured.)
Also, there is a configurable 3-line module,
examples/python/plplot_python_start.py(.in), that keeps track of the install
location if different from standard.

With the python scheme, $prefix=/usr works well for packagers, and also
everything works well for those who want to install to their own personal
prefix without having to be root.  Please adopt the same idea for octave.

Alan

__________________________
Alan W. Irwin
email: ir...@be...
phone: 250-727-2902

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and
Analysis (www.cccma.bc.ec.gc.ca) and the PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org).

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