Default install target does not match traditional /usr/local

[Adam Dingle]

Normally if I download a source tarball for any program and run 'make' and then 'make install', the program is installed in /usr/local by default. I can configure with prefix=/usr if I want to override this.

But when I download the bake tarball and run 'make' and then 'make install', bake ends up in /usr (specifically in /usr/bin). It would be more consistent with other programs to go in /usr/local by default.

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

I used to have it install to /usr/local but I changed it recently.

I've been thinking about this for a while, but not 100% sure the correct direction. My thoughts so far:
- By default Bake should install everything into a valid location.
- We want to be able to install without overwriting package managed programs
- /usr/local requires root privileges to install
- There are files outside of /usr (e.g. /etc, /var) that might need to be installed
- Matching /usr/local does have some consistency with existing systems
- We want to be able to install without requiring root
- It would be nice to install to ~/.local

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

One more, I plan on having a ~/.config/bake/Recipe.conf that all programs will have at their toplevel recipe tree. So inside there you can specify root-directory and override the built-in defaults.

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

"I plan on having a ~/.config/bake/Recipe.conf that all programs will have at their toplevel recipe tree. So inside there you can specify root-directory and override the built-in defaults."

Yes please! I've noticed that existing build systems spend a lot of code on detecting the proper paths to install everything. Wouldn't it be great if each distribution just had a default Bake config with all the variables like location of executable-but-internal files (libexec) defined in there?

Also I assume power users would require managing several profiles, so that they can e.g. install something to their home folder or to a chroot or to /usr/local/ instead of /usr/ simply by specifying a profile that contains the overrides.