Installation layout idea

It had occurred to me that it would be nice (if not necessary) that one
could use `configure --prefix=/usr/local', and good things would happen.
(replace /usr/local with any other shared prefix)

Currently, bad things will happen, in particular in the include dir, but
also under share, with severe cluttering. It is common in these cases to
create package-specific subdirectories (/usr/local/include/pgsql, etc.),
as indeed the binary packages do.

Now it might be awkward to unconditionally append "pgsql" to various
directory names; think `/usr/local/pgsql/include/pgsql'. Therefore I
propose the following scheme, stolen in its entirety from Apache:

The string "pgsql/" will automatically be appended to datadir (not the
same as PGDATA), sysconfdir, includedir, and docdir, unless one of the
following is true:

1) The user specified the particular directory manually (--sysconfdir,
etc.), or

2) The expanded directory name already contains the string "pgsql" or
"postgres" somewhere.

I'd say that most users currently fall under exception 2), so they would
not be affected. Those brave enough to try an install into /usr/local
would finally get reasonable behaviour.

One fine day we might also want to consider changing the default directory
names from "pgsql" to "postgresql". It's not nice to use two different
names, and the tarball is already named "postgresql". Is that a reasonable
possibility?

--
Peter Eisentraut Sernanders väg 10:115
peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net 75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/ Sweden