On Nov 2, 2011, at 10:17 AM, Andrew Haley wrote: > Sure, but that doesn't answer the question, which was "is there ever > any advantage to building in-srcdir?" The answer "Yes: one can build > in srcdir" doesn't quite do it!
Well, unstated in that is that one doesn't have to manually create an object directory. Also, unstated in that, is that to build a random package, one doesn't have to read the documentation to configure and build it, they can just build it. and it will just work. These are the advantages. It used to be the case, a long time ago, that building software was a random hodge-podge of weird random commands, the situation has been improving over the years to standardize on a few small incantations that work. The configure && make && make install, was the command standardized on, right after make && make install. It is like explaining the advantage of a red stop light being red. It is red, because all stop lights are red. This is nicely circular. The reason _why_ is have a standard, isn't just to make the light red, it is so that all users of all stop lights expect it to be red, and if it weren't bad things would happen. We make ./configure && make && make install work, because our users expect it to work, and there is no reason to break that assumption.
