I am trying to compile a program and then make it install to a temporary directory. I am then going to make that directory into a slackware install package (which requires. However, the program I am compiling said I could install to a separate directory by sending a prefix='/my/path' to the ./configure script. However, this also makes a bunch of hardcodes in that program for libraries. So, when I actually install the program from the slack package I made, the libraries aren't in the right place.

Therefore, I need a way to make `make install` install to a different directory than root. I tried to use chroot, but I guess that changes everything because when I did that bash couldn't find `make` and gave me an error.

This really can't be that difficult, what do I do?

thanks.

do this:
./configure --prefix=/usr # This will configure it so that everything goes to /usr (just wait I understand your question)

then do a make to build everything

now here is where the question is answered
make install DESTDIR=/the/temporrary/directory/you/want
there you go :-P then do the slackware packager (This method works for 70-85% of all sources)

thanks! It worked.

I don't know if this would meet your needs as well, but checkinstall creates a Slackware package (or Debian package or RPM) and then installs the software. Basically, checkinstall is a replacement for the make install step and leaves you with a distributable package as well as installed software.

on a side noteI am making a program similar to checkinstall, but while checkinstall only does the configure/make system of install (or at least that is all I could find) mine has the ability to do sources that use configure, bootstrap, autogen, makefile makefile in subdirectory, configure or auto, etc in subdirectory, copy pre-build binaries libraries and so on, plus perl python, install.sh and even binary codecs for things like mplayer, thenit also has a section for application specific options, and it is all automatic, give it a directory full of tarballs and it will go for it. go to sourceforge and lookup exmmpkg, it is not uploaded yet, but will be ain a few days, I have tgz slack packages working, it will however have its own package system redhat and debian support.