Installing XML/Ada - quick question

General
1

From README.md of GitHub - AdaCore/xmlada: The XML/Ada toolkit. · GitHub we find this suggestion:

You need to automatically detect a few aspects of your build environment,
which is done by running
./configure --prefix=PREFIX
where PREFIX is the installation directory you wish to use. It is recommended
to install into the GNAT directory. This way the project files will be
installed into the default location where gnatmake and gprbuild are looking
for projects.

But what is meant by “the GNAT directory”? For example, the gnat binary resides in /opt/bin. But, I doubt that I should use: “./configure –prefix=/opt/bin” ??

I had earlier tried to use “./configure –prefix=/opt” but had run into troubles with grpconfig not finding the gnat that was installed in /opt/bin. (So, I am re-tracing installation steps to see if I can get it correct this time.)

So, what is the correct setting to use for —prefix ?

2

That depends on the OS and the location of the GNAT installation. For example, in Debian the native toolchain looks into /usr/share/gpr for the project files. So the prefix would be /usr. However you can actually use any directory you like and then add the subdirectory containing the gpr file to the ADA_PROJECT_PATH environment variable.

3

Thank you for the reply. This makes sense and helps indeed.

4

Just for information, Alire is recommended way to install and manage tools and components.

XmlAda is available as crate, as well as gprbuild is available as toolchain component.

There is no reasons to build/install all of them manually, except some exotic corner cases.