From: Junio C Hamano Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 11:47:19 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] auto-detect changed $prefix in Makefile and properly rebuild to avoid broken install Message-ID: <7vzmga1y9k.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> In-Reply-To: <20060618112404.GA2446@diana.vm.bytemark.co.uk> Karl Hasselström writes: > GNU stow doesn't move installed programs, it just maintains symlinks > to them. You install programs under /usr/local/stow/foo-4.7.11, and > stow sets up symlinks to them under /usr/local. (So for example, > /usr/local/bin/foo would be a symlink to > /usr/local/stow/foo-4.7.11/bin/foo.) This gives you the ability to > nuke an installed program cleanly. And it just works, pathwise, since > the program remains in its original location. Thanks for the explanation. If that's the case, I think it makes the original problem Santi brought up a non-issue. In this sequence: make prefix=/home/santi/usr make install prefix=/home/santi/usr/stow/git cd /home/santi/usr/stow/ stow -v git the building phase could have used the same prefix as the install phase uses, and git can find its subprograms in gitexecdir (= ~/usr/stow/git/bin) just fine. It probably is even slightly more efficient since it does not have to go through the symlink stow installs.