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Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2012 07:22:33 -0700 (MST)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: ports@freebsd.org
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Cc: 
Subject: Porter's Handbook: PREFIX and DESTDIR
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The section on PREFIX and DESTDIR in the Porter's Handbook is unclear 
and confusing.  Following up from a thread in -doc, here are the 
proposed changes so far.

Existing section:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/porting-prefix.html

Proposed:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/porters-prefix/book.html#PORTING-PREFIX
diff: 
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/porters-prefix/patch-porters-prefix.diff

Beyond some rewriting and clarification, I removed the mention of 
LOCALBASE sometimes being /opt, which is covered by saying it can be a 
custom path.

Is there any reason to keep the references to /usr/X11R6?

Finally, this paragraph

   The variable PREFIX can be reassigned in your Makefile or in the
   user's environment.  However, it is strongly discouraged for
   individual ports to set this variable explicitly in the Makefiles.

is not clear, and was rewritten to

   PREFIX should not be set explicitly in a port's Makefile.  Users
   installing the port may have set PREFIX to a custom location, and the
   port should respect that setting.

Does that capture the intended meaning of the original?  Has it left 
anything out?