12.5.2 Transformation Examples

These transformations are useful with programs that can be part of a cross-compilation development environment. For example, a cross-assembler running on a Sun 4 configured with `--target=i960-vxworks' is normally installed as `i960-vxworks-as', rather than `as', which could be confused with a native Sun 4 assembler.

You can force a program name to begin with `g', if you don't want GNU programs installed on your system to shadow other programs with the same name. For example, if you configure GNU diff with `--program-prefix=g', then when you run `make install' it is installed as `/usr/local/bin/gdiff'.

As a more sophisticated example, you could use

--program-transform-name='s/^/g/; s/^gg/g/; s/^gless/less/'

to prepend `g' to most of the program names in a source tree, excepting those like gdb that already have one and those like less and lesskey that aren't GNU programs. (That is assuming that you have a source tree containing those programs that is set up to use this feature.)

One way to install multiple versions of some programs simultaneously is to append a version number to the name of one or both. For example, if you want to keep Autoconf version 1 around for awhile, you can configure Autoconf version 2 using `--program-suffix=2' to install the programs as `/usr/local/bin/autoconf2', `/usr/local/bin/autoheader2', etc. Nevertheless, pay attention that only the binaries are renamed, therefore you'd have problems with the library files which might overlap.