__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-2.4.1/include/http_log.h.orig 2011-12-03 00:19:04.000000000 +0100 +++ httpd-2.4.1/include/http_log.h 2012-02-22 00:19:37.989185555 +0100 @@ -280,7 +280,12 @@ * @see ap_log_rerror * @see ap_log_cserror */ +#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.