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I am doing Linux development on a few machines, mainly Slackware 13.37 and Ubuntu 12.04. I am testing and validating the results of a few simple makefiles, and want to confirm the output of make install. However, before I go ahead testing this, I want to know if there is a portable means of changing the default output destination for make install for any makefile.

I would prefer if I could somehow stage my output, so all output goes to, for example:

/test/bin
/test/lib
/test/usr/bin

instead of:

/bin
/lib
/usr/bin

I know that in QNX development environments, for example, I can set environment variables like QCONF_OVERRIDE and INSTALL_ROOT_nto, and guarantee that no makefile is able to install anywhere other than a subdirectory of /test for example. Is there a similar mechanism for GCC on Ubuntu that just requires setting some environment variables in my ~/.bashrc file? I do all my work via command-line and VIM anyways, so I'm not worried about the case where a pretty IDE doesn't understand these environment variables due to them not being in a .kderc, .gnomerc, or equivalent.

Thank you.

Cloud
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  • Have you tried with `make --prefix=/path/to/local/directory`? – rendon Feb 13 '14 at 03:48
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    That won't work; `--prefix` is not a valid flag to `make`. To answer the original question, no, there is no variable you can set that will guarantee that regardless of the makefile. Whether there's a way to do this or not is a function of the makefile. If the makefile has a way to do it you can; if it doesn't you can't. However virtually every makefile _does_ have a way to do it. – MadScientist Feb 13 '14 at 04:06
  • OK. It's kind of a shame this isn't a distribution-independent thing that can be managed, especially given how GCC has been coupled with Linux since its early days (I started on Slackware 3.0). QNX does this beautifully, and allows you to even override cases where the `make install` target explicitly attempts to install to an absolute path just by setting some environment variables in a script sourced by all users at logon. – Cloud Feb 13 '14 at 04:08
  • ```make DESTDIR=/test install``` – KunMing Xie Feb 14 '18 at 01:58
  • [DESTDIR and PREFIX of make](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11307465/destdir-and-prefix-of-make) – kgbook Jan 16 '19 at 06:32

3 Answers3

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Short answer: no.

Long answer:

There isn't a way to set the output destination for any Makefile; the Makefile or some other part of the build system has to be designed to make it possible. make is a very simple tool because it's intended to function identically across a wide variety of platforms. Consequently, it doesn't really use environment variables that aren't present in the Makefile itself. This is good in terms of environment pollution and for keeping things less magic, but bad for achieving your desired goal.

A bit of context: things are a bit more complicated in part because, unlike the QNX development environment (a largely homogeneous cross-compilation environment), a large portion of software that uses make (I'm assuming GNU make but this applies to other versions as well) to build is written for a heterogeneous build and run environment—it may be designed to be able to build for different distributions, operating systems (Linux, MS Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, etc.), and even hardware architecture (x86, arm, mips, power, sparc, sh, etc.). Sometimes you're building for the same system and sometimes for a different one. Unsurprisingly, there isn't really a standard way to define an install path across such a variety of systems.

Basile mentioned in his answer that for programs that use the GNU build system, you can use ./configure --prefix=/test. This will typically work for simple programs that use Autotools. For more complicated programs using GNU Autotools, there are usually complications if more diverse options are available:

  • cross-compiling? You might want your prefix to be set to where it's going to be installed on the target system (maybe /usr/local), and to use make install DESTDIR=/test.
  • Does your build system expect dependencies in the prefix directory, but you want to find them elsewhere? Better run ./configure --help to see what other options there are for providing alternate paths (often --with-foo=/prefix/of/foo)

I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting right now, but I think you get the picture.

Keep in mind that only applies to projects that use Autotools. Other projects may have other systems (perhaps naming a variable or editing a configuration file), so ultimately your best bet is to read the project documentation, and failing that, the Makefile. Fun, eh?

P.S. Having variables defined in the environment is different than passing them as a command argument to make, i.e. SPAM="alot" make target is different from make target SPAM="alot"—the latter will override makefile variables. See the GNU make docs on Variables from the Environment.

cha5on
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Just change prefix variable in makefile

prefix=/test

then run

 make install

also you can run following command for installing binaries

make prefix=/test install

Refer http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory-Variables.html

Rahul R Dhobi
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At least for GNU software (using autotools) you should configure your software with 

./configure --prefix=/test

just using (without a specific --prefix to configure before)

make prefix=/test install

usually won't work correctly, because some of the files are builtin for the program so their path becomes a constant inside it.

You could also use make install DESTDIR=/tmp/dest and then copy /tmp/dest to /test but it won't work correctly neither

For example, my /usr/local/bin/emacs binary has /usr/local/share/emacs/24.3.50/lisp as some string (checked with strings /usr/local/bin/emacs command) and the /usr/local/ part of that path is the configure-d prefix.

BTW, you could have a chroot-ed environment to test your applications for various distributions.

Basile Starynkevitch
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