Jed Brown writes:

Barry Smith <[email protected]> writes:

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$libdir/petsc/ if we want to be like libtool and pkgconfig.

lib - Currently we put Matlab compiled stuff here (Matlab uses arch specific suffixes so versions for any architecture can be dumped in this same place, of course the PETSc library in the upper directory is specific :-).

$libdir is for arch-specific stuff like object files and shared libraries.

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$datadir/petsc/ if we think of them as host-independent (similar to man pages).

share - Some of our external packages put stuff here.

I think of share as something that kind of works for any architecture (like manual pages) and not things that a specific to a particular architecture. Since conf stuff is particular to an architecture does this mean we should put conf there? And for backwards compatibility have a link from $prefix/conf for a while?

I think this is the argument for using libdir (like libtool and pkgconfig do) instead of datadir. I have mixed feelings about a $prefix/conf/ link -- it's unconventional and bad and people should update their makefiles to use (a forthcoming) petsc-config. But people don't like having stuff break inexplicably so we should probably install it for a while and have it print a warning telling people how to upgrade their makefiles.

Yes, libdir would be fine (e.g. /opt/local/lib/petsc). Some packages put their cmake files and whatnot there.