[Fedora-packaging] app wants runtime help file in /usr/share/help

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 10/25/2009 03:04 PM, David Timms wrote:
> Hi, an app I maintain recently gained a help menu. It expects to find
> the single help.html file in /usr/share/help
> (ie:
> make install helpdir=%{buildroot}%{_datadir}/help
> )
>
> This folder seems to be owned by rarian, and hence doesn't seem to make
> sense as location to place this help file.

This sounds like a blatant bug in rarian to me ;-)

> Is the best approach to patch the src so that it expects to find the
> help file in a better location ?
> What would that location be ?
>
> ie. maybe:
> make install helpdir=%{buildroot}%{_datadir}/%{name}
No, because this would only change the directory of installation, but 
would not change the application's expectiations (the application's 
built-in directory).

I.e. the application would still look into $(datadir)/help while the 
files it expects to find are located elsewhere.

> , and then adjust src to look there ?
Exactly. You have to change the sources to make the app look into the 
modified installation directory.

How to implement this depends on a package's configuration/makefile details.

In some cases it would be necessary to patch the sources.

In some cases it's possible to override values at "configuration-time" 
or make-time.

I.e. there are chances
%configure helpdir=%{_datadir}/%{name}
make
make install DESTDIR="..."
might work.

or
%configure
make helpdir="%{_datadir}/%{name}"
make helpdir="%{_datadir}/%{name}" DESTDIR="..." install

will work.

Ralf