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From: gam@lanl.gov (Gim Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Alternative installation directories for X11R4
Summary: problems with hard-coded include paths
Message-ID: <16001@lanl.gov>
Date: 27 Feb 91 14:41:22 GMT
References: <32602@sequoia.execu.com> <1991Feb23.164951.4655@dsl.pitt.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 36

In article <1991Feb23.164951.4655@dsl.pitt.edu>, sean@dsl.pitt.edu (Sean McLinden) writes:
> In article <32602@sequoia.execu.com> keith@sequoia.execu.com (Keith Pyle) writes:
> >Is it possible/practical to install X11R4 somewhere other than in
> >the default directories of /usr/bin/X11 and /usr/lib/X11?
> 
> Yes/no.
> 
> It is possible, it may even be practical in some situations, but
> my experience doing this on a few different networks is that you
> don't want to unless you *absolutely* have to. The problem stems
> from the fact that X11 inherited the 4.2bsd-style of file system
> organization which, in turn, suffered from a limitation in user
> definable library paths for the ld(1) link editor.

I've come across another problem, which arises when you're
developing X applications and you've installed the X distribution
in a non-standard place.

Many of the include files in the MIT distribution themselves 
contain directives of the form

#include <X11/Xlib.h>

That is, these directives require that the X11 headers be under
certain system-defined directories.  If you install the release say
in /usr/tmp, cpp will fail on these directives when you try to compile
your own X application.

The only solution I've come up with is to alter the directives to the
form

#include "Xlib.h"


Graham Mark
Los Alamos National Laboratory