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By default, configure
sets the prefix for files it installs to
/usr/local. The user of configure
can select a different
prefix using the --prefix and --exec-prefix options.
There are two ways to change the default: when creating
configure
, and when running it.
Some software packages might want to install in a directory other than
/usr/local by default. To accomplish that, use the
AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT
macro.
Set the default installation prefix to prefix instead of /usr/local.
It may be convenient for users to have configure
guess the
installation prefix from the location of a related program that they
have already installed. If you wish to do that, you can call
AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM
.
If the user did not specify an installation prefix (using the
--prefix option), guess a value for it by looking for
program in PATH
, the way the shell does. If program
is found, set the prefix to the parent of the directory containing
program, else default the prefix as described above
(/usr/local or AC_PREFIX_DEFAULT
). For example, if
program is gcc
and the PATH
contains
/usr/local/gnu/bin/gcc, set the prefix to /usr/local/gnu.