On 2 Mar 2000, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Mar 2, 2000, Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Alexandre Oliva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > | On Mar 1, 2000, Jim Meyering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > |
> > | > Don't use `ln' (which was just a space optimization anyway)
> > |
> > | A worthwhile optimization, IMO.
>
> > Worthwhile? Why?
>
> Because then `make dist' is much faster. I often find myself running
> `make dist' multiple times on packages I don't manage alone, to
> compare it with the source tree and see if somebody forgot to add some
> file to the dist rules. I really appreciate that `make dist' is fast
> in this case. But then, I often configure on another filesystem, so
> the `ln' optimization doesn't apply that often.
>
> But I remember a posting, some time ago, from someone who was really
> glad about being able to fix errors in the dist tree and having them
> automagically fixed in the source tree too.
That was me. This helped me because the `maintainer' makefiles didn't
work with my non-gcc compiler. Most of the development was done using
gcc, but in order to check that no GCC-isms had crept into the code, I
would occasionally `make distdir', and build the package in the distdir
with IRIX CC. When I found a bug, it was nice that the edited source file
would show up in the distdir with no extra work. Not a huge gain, but a
nice hack nonetheless.
Now, of course, dependency tracking works for IRIX CC, right? So if the
optimization in question goes away, it will go away in a release of
automake that supports IRIX CC dep tracking, and I won't care too much.
-Steve
