The binary rpm package of Kwave is "relocatable". That means that you can build the package on a system with any KDE3 directory and install it on an other system and/or into a different directory. This feature is very useful to install a package compiled for SuSE under a RedHat system or vice-versa.

For example: you got the binary rpm from a friend who has a RedHat system (where the KDE3 directory is /usr) and want to install it on a SuSE system (where the KDE3 directory is /opt/kde3). Then just give a different prefix when installing the rpm. Example:

% rpm -ivh --prefix=/opt/kde3 kwave-0.7.11.i586.rpm

This modifies the path where the program is installed and it is strongly recommended that this is a directory that is contained in the KDEDIRS environment variable, or the directory that the shell command kde-config --prefix returns. Otherwise Kwave would be unable to find it's menu configuration, plugins, preset files and so on...