libraries/headers locations question (compiling)
 

I have been working on packaging libgsm ( http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/toast.html ). My only real goal in packaging this was to ease my packaging and installation of FFMpeg ( http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php ).

I came across a patch (to be honest, I can't remember where I came across the patch) that only needed a little tweaking to get everything working the way I wanted (libgsm is OLD and doesn't compile/package quite as easily as some of the other programs I have worked with).

Now, on to my questions. Header files are placed in /usr/include/gsm and libraries are placed in /usr/lib/gsm. Trying to compile FFMpeg bombs out. Solution? Symlinks. I symlink the headers in /usr/include and the libraries in /usr/lib.

That works, but that brings an interesting question (interesting to me, anyway). Where are these libraries and headers "supposed" to go. Is there some standard?

Ideas:

1)

Headers in /usr/include/gsm
Libraries in /usr/lib/gsm

Problem with this: It doesn't work!!!

2)

Headers in /usr/include
Libraries in /usr/lib

Problem with this: It seems messy. Putting everything in /usr/lib or /usr/include will make for a HUGE hard to search directory. It also doesn't seem right because many other packages seem to be using subdirectories with no problem.

Upside to this: It works. Also, looking at some Debian packages, it seems that they place the libraries in /usr/lib (adding creedance to the idea that this is the right spot for them).

3)

Headers in /usr/include/libgsm
Libraries in /usr/lib/libgsm

I have no idea if this would work (haven'y treid it yet). I was going to test this, but that got me thinking about the whole "where should I put headers/libraries" in the first place.

So, any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

You may be able to pass the location of the libs at the time you compile FFMpeg -check the configure options.
For the headers you could just alter the 'includes' in FFMpeg so they point to /usr/include/libgsm.
Sounds like FFMpeg probably includes these headers and libs explicitly without the subdirs. Otherwise they should all be found normally under subdirectories in /usr/include and /usr/lib -notice that there are lots of subdirs there already.
Welcome to the 'old software' club. I've recently revived some stuff from WAY back ('91-'92) and altered some programs that were written to run under AIX (from /opt) so that they work under Linux. Somethese are available as binary packages at:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/.../download/G12/

I've since cleaned up all the sources (and more)and fixed the Makefiles, etc and written build scripts for all of them so that anyone can build them.

G12 is my new mini non-integrated Desktop Environment. Now you can have a very handy desktop with browser, e-mail and around 25 other GUI accessory programs -all in less than 240MB! And that even includes all the docs and man pages.