strange makefile

I am running a standalone PC with RedHat vers. 5.2 Linux.

I have been using Postgresql vers. 6.3 , on and off, for several
months now- having retreived

it from my RedHat CDROM in RPM format.

The database I set up was for cataloging my photograph collection
and it has 9 fields so that

the task of inserting each record proved to be a very slow process.

Having been teaching myself how to program in Perl
I decided to try an attempt at making

the whole thing more user friendly with a Perl routine. The standard
books I have don't tell

you much about this but I found something on the Perl Journal web site
which points the way.

It seemed that I would need to download the necessary Perl extensions
plus something

called DBI. The task was duly carried out but from the README file
I noted that I must have

a version of postgresql of 4 or higher.

This directed me to your website from which I downloaded
the tar.gz file for version 6.5

I followed the instructions in the INSTALL file
and ended up with a postgresql setup in

the default /usr/local/pgsql. This all seemed to be ok but it didn't
want to know about my

data files residing in the RedHat default of /var/lib/pgsql, you will
realise that I now have two

Postgresql setups on board. Getting daring I reconfigured to include
the Perl option and again

everything compiled OK.

I thought to myself I would really like my new setup in the
RedHat default area so I did another

compilation only this time I built it over the existing /var/lib/pgsql
setup.

It was during this rebuild that I came unstuck with trying to
install my HTML & man files

It came up with a complaint about BASEDIR, I skipped this and
went on to try to install

the program but exactly the same problem occured. I knew I had BASEDIR
pointing in the right

place having done tcsh and then setenv BASEDIR=/usr/home/postgresql6-5.1/src

followed by bash echo $BASEDIR.

Now I am not very well versed in C programming, I've done a little
on the old Sinclair QL,

but I had a poke around in the Makefile.global and saw the line
POSTGRESDIR= BASEDIR

I thought this doesn't look quite right as compared with way
other similar lines are written.

I then, using vim, altered the line to POSTGRESDIR=($BASEDIR)
and from this point everything

compiled OK.

Now my Redhat setup puts all the bin executable files into /usr/bin/
instead of /var/lib/pgsql,

this entailed mv 'ing my old RHat bin files to something like
oldpsql etc and then copying down

my new set from /var/lib/pgsql into /usr/bin. This enabled me to leave
my $PATH definition

in .bash_profile as it was originally.

I had quite a bit of trouble getting initdb to work but I finally
seem to have got the option list

into a format it seems to understand.

When this was done I went into psql and tried it out as per your
INSTALL documentation

and found to my great relief that it works. Now comes the task
of rubbing out all the surplus

to requirement bits.

I don't know if what I noted about the Makefile.global
is a bug or just a typo or something

happened to it in my earlier compilations.

Best wishes

Leslie Till