[Distutils] Some code to play with

[Greg Ward]

Quoth Gregor Hoffleit, on 11 April 1999:
> Just a quick question: Does the package support something like
> autoconf's DESTDIR ? I.e. installing the built package in a directory
> different from the actual target ? I'm not sure if that's in the scope 
> of `build --dir' or `install --prefix'.

The installation directories are up to the 'install' command.  The most
convenient way to set them is by setting the prefix, but you can (or
will be able to) set every target directory individually.  RTFS for the
options that control this -- I haven't documented anything yet because
I'm not sure the option names are final.

> DESTDIR is necessary for building Debian packages: Debian's packaging
> tools work on files in `pwd`/debian/tmp. Generally, something like
> "./configure --prefix /usr; make; make DESTDIR=`pwd`/debian/tmp
> install" is used. Note that this is different from setting prefix to
> `pwd`/debian/tmp!

In general, that's true -- but as the Distutils currently stand, the
prefix is used *solely* to generate the installation directories.  So it 
doesn't (yet) matter which one you set.  I'm not sure if that will
remain true forever, though.

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                    gward@cnri.reston.va.us
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