a portable ./configure --prefix option
 

I'm trying to install gtetrinet in such a way that it can easily be moved to a different directory. Unfortunately, ./configure expands any --prefix environment variables I set. For example, if I use --prefix $(HOME)/games, it gets installed to /home/joe/games, with all the paths hard-wired into the executable. This is fine for playing the game in /home/joe, but it doesn't work if I try to move it to /home/foo on a different machine. Is there a way to fix this?

is there some reason why you have to move it and not compile it again on the target ???
I think it would be very unlikely that link paths are hard wired......
I think more likely you just aren't moving the whole thing.....
or binary incompatability with the target system..
different version of gnome different glibc different gcc or whatever ??
what error messages do you get when you run it on the new target and it fails????
besides the execulable i would imagine you need to move the whole
--prefix/gtetrinet directory structure resursively
also some stuff by convention is not effected by --prefix and may have hard coded paths
i'm not sure -- gconf is a huge mystery to me !
other files would be in all the folders of
usr/share/locale
and images in
usr/share/pixmaps
and gnome schema file most lkely in
/etc/gconf/schemas

I want to play it on computers at university but I only have write permissions on my home folder. I also need to put it in some other people's home folders so they can play too. I can't compile it at university because they don't have all the developement libs installed and I don't have an infinite disk quota.

I don't think the linking will be a problem. The problem is that getrinet looks in /home/joe/games/share/gtetrinet/themes/default for a png file. If it can't open that directory, it pops up an infinite string of dialogue boxes saying it can't find the theme file - reverting to default. If I could change the path it looks in to $HOME/games/share/gtetrinet/themes/default then I wouldn't have a problem