patching Makefiles vs. setting things straight with post-install & mv(1)

[Petar Bogdanovic <petar%smokva.net@localhost>]

Hi,

I asked an author if he is willing to add another configure switch to
his software which would allow the separation between `where to look for
configure files' and `where to install configure files'.

See pkgsrc developer guide 15.2.2. & 15.2.3. (``the packages themselves
must not touch the contents of ${PKG_SYSCONFDIR} directly'') for
the reason behind this request.

Here is his response:

   > What is the difference between changing the Makefiles of an
   > application to put its configuration files where the pkgsrc
   > developer guide requires or following the application's
   > Makefiles in the NetBSD machinery with find and mv commands?
   >
   >   find /somewhere/outside/of/PREFIX -name '*.conf' |
   >        xargs -I {} mv {} $PREFIX/share/examples
   >
   > --confdir is possible, but I would like to avoid adding
   > mechnanisms unless really necessary.


So, why do we prefer patching over simply moving files in post-install?



Thanks,



   Petar Bogdanovic