Re: Support for architecture-independent binaries

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Reuben,

* Reuben Thomas wrote on Tue, Mar 08, 2011 at 03:21:54PM CET:
> Hence, I write here to ask whether for projects written in languages
> whose executable format is machine-independent (typically, because
> it's textual), it would not make sense to support installation of
> executables on a path derived from --prefix, not --exec-prefix? (It
> doesn't seem necessary to invent a third prefix.)

I see some value in this, but note that even scripts often depend on
system-specifics in a way that would make this directory unsuitable
for sharing between different architectures.

For example, automake is a perl script that however depends on where
perl is installed and what features this version and configuration of
perl offers.  It thus cannot reside in this machine-independent
directory, unfortunately.  Many other nontrivial scripts I know are
similar.  Those that are not, are typically fairly small, thus sharing
would seem to maybe have an organizational advantage, but the space
saving aspect would be minimal.

Cheers,
Ralf