reason for both --libdir and --libsubdir ?

[Simon Marlow]

Duncan Coutts wrote:
> I am trying to understand the reason we have so many --dir flags to
> configure. I'd prefer to remove what appear to be duplicates and add
> some more dir overrides for specific file types (like docs).
> 
> We currently have:
> 
> --libdir= and --libsubdir=
> --datadir= and --datasubdir=
> 
> in each case the subdir flavour is an extra directory underneath the
> main dir which defaults to the package id. Seems to me that we can get
> rid of the subdir stuff because you can say:
> 
> --libdir='/foo/bar/$pkgid/$compiler'
> 
> Indeed this already works. So can we deprecate the subdir variants and
> tell people to just use these vars?
> 
> The only thing the subdir thing was for is to be able to adjust the
> libdir while still getting the pkgid and compiler components generically
> and we can do that more flexibly with vars.

Hmm, I remember going through several iterations of the design here before 
ending up with --libsubdir.  I can't remember all the rationale now (darn, 
wish I'd written it down somehwere).  Did you check the mailing list archives?

Cheers,
	Simon