On 03 March 2006 11:38, Claudio Fontana wrote:
>> Programs that do
>> not support it are buggy and should be reported to
>> the author.
>
> This might be good in theory, but in practice it's not
> that simple. I am screening _all_ GNU projects, and
> I'm testing, contacting the maintainers, advicing,
> writing many, many patches and whole new build systems
> just to have all GNU projects support the existence of
> a working configure script, or a Makefile with the
> common targets.
>
> Maybe when all GNU projects are mostly ok with the GNU
> coding standards, then we can be picky and start to
> fix projects with builddir == srcdir assumption.
> Now it's not a realistic goal.
Surely, now, when you're going over the build systems of all these projects
and tidying them up to standard, rather than later, in an entire subsequent
second pass over all the same ground again, is /exactly/ the right time to do
it. Supporting builddir!=srcdir is only a tiny amount extra on top of what
you're already doing, probably mostly handled simply by modifying your
standard templates for configure scripts. Doing it in a second pass would
require a /vast/ amount of redundant effort.
_Please_ think very seriously about doing it now, as you go along.
cheers,
DaveK
--
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....
