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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: [patch] faster Makefile.in -> Makefile translation
From:       David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2000-04-03 9:31:00
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On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 11:08:47AM +0200, Michael Matz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Sun, 2 Apr 2000, Alex Zepeda wrote:
> > suggestion, but what about the perl to C "compiler"?  Couldn't someone drop
> > in a binary to replace the perl script and distribute that for people who
> > are against installing perl?  (Yes, yes, yes, binaries are a bad idea, but
> > still).
> 
> If they don't have perl, they don't deserve a fast Makefile.in->Makefile
> conversion ;)
> Seriously, binaries would be nightmare, we would have to provide them for
> every this-and-that platform, statically linked, to compile from
> _source_. The nice thing on autoconf and friends is that they use system
> tools to do their work. Binary code is no system tool (err, well, one
> could argue, but...).
> But it's reasonable to see perl as a system tool, so we use this.

Definitely right. Binaries no, perl yes, with a fallback on standard sh.

> > >Meanwhile there has popped up a problem with srcdir==builddir (who is
> > >using that? ;) ). The VPATH substitution does not work in this case.
> > >Quick fix is in attachment.
> > 
> > Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing support for this dropped either.  Perhaps
> > by default configure could create a subdir "obj" to stick all of the object
> > files in?  This means that to solve any weird dependency or build problems,
> > one could just rm -rf obj, and rerun configure et. al.
> 
> I fully agree.

I don't. Up to now the developer had the choice, why remove this choice ?
For instance when making source packages from a check'ed out tree,
I'm happy that my objdir is not inside the source dir (I put them
somewhere else). And it's confusing for most people, who are used
to srcdir==objdir. We could set up instructions on how to use scrdir!=objdir
since, I agree, it's good practice, but enforcing it is a very bad idea.

Reminds me of the first time I compiled something that used srcdir!=builddir
automatically, and I was *really* confused.

-- 
David FAURE
david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://home.clara.net/faure/
KDE, Making The Future of Computing Available Today

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