Brian Gough bjg@gnu.org writes:
Nettle should work better with other GNU packages if it follows the GNU standards, as the assumption of lib/ as a default is a common one in other configure scripts.
I don't change the default lightly, but I still think it's the right thing to do when
1. The user has not provided --libdir explicitly.
2. One is building on a multi-abi system, which is a case where the autoconf default doesn't even try to do the right thing.
3. The autoconf default is known to be wrong.
For comparison the GMP library has ABI detection via configure but keeps the library directory as lib/ by default.
I'm reasonably familiar with the gmp configure script. It's true that it currently always uses lib/ as the default, regardless of ABI, but it's ABI related hacks can also cause other nasty surprises. So it's a good example to exhibit the complexity of the problem, but it's not currently solving it.
As for linux on x86_64, it appears that debian (and derivatives, I imagine) put 64-bit libraries in lib/, while the distributions with roots in redhat (at least rhel 5 and fedora 14) and gentoo follow the fhs conventions and put 32-bit libraries in lib/. So to do the right thing, configure has to distinguish between these two cases. What a mess (but just the type of mess configure.ac is intended to help sort out).
Regards, /Niels