__FILE__ expands to the full pathname during VPATH builds; this clutters up the debug log (and also bloats binaries very slightly). The -pie patch defines AP_FNAME during build which is equivalent to basename(__FILE__); use that for debug logging where available. AP_FNAME uses $(notdir ...), a GNU make extension, so this can't go upstream. Note this patch depends on the pie patch. --- httpd-2.3.8/include/http_log.h~ 2010-06-14 22:59:05.000000000 +0300 +++ httpd-2.3.8/include/http_log.h 2010-09-01 13:18:19.608547664 +0300 @@ -213,7 +213,11 @@ extern int AP_DECLARE_DATA ap_default_loglevel; +#ifdef AP_FNAME +#define APLOG_MARK AP_FNAME,__LINE__,APLOG_MODULE_INDEX +#else #define APLOG_MARK __FILE__,__LINE__,APLOG_MODULE_INDEX +#endif /** * Set up for logging to stderr.