info automake

2.2.3 Standard Directory Variables

The GNU Coding Standards also specify a hierarchy of variables to denote installation directories. Some of these are:

Directory variable	Default value
`prefix`	`/usr/local`
`exec_prefix`	`${prefix}`
`bindir`	`${exec_prefix}/bin`
`libdir`	`${exec_prefix}/lib`
…
`includedir`	`${prefix}/include`
`datarootdir`	`${prefix}/share`
`datadir`	`${datarootdir}`
`mandir`	`${datarootdir}/man`
`infodir`	`${datarootdir}/info`
`docdir`	`${datarootdir}/doc/${PACKAGE}`
…

Each of these directories has a role which is often obvious from its name. In a package, any installable file will be installed in one of these directories. For instance in amhello-1.0, the program ‘hello’ is to be installed in bindir, the directory for binaries. The default value for this directory is ‘/usr/local/bin’, but the user can supply a different value when calling configure. Also the file ‘README’ will be installed into docdir, which defaults to ‘/usr/local/share/doc/amhello’.

A user who wishes to install a package on his own account could proceed as follows:

~/amhello-1.0 % ./configure --prefix ~/usr
…
~/amhello-1.0 % make
…
~/amhello-1.0 % make install
…

This would install ‘~/usr/bin/hello’ and ‘~/usr/share/doc/amhello/README’.

The list of all such directory options is shown by ./configure --help.