(autoconf.info)Transformation Examples

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9.4.2 Transformation Examples
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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.