On Friday, December 15, 2000, at 03:24 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > >
> > > /jakarta-tomcat/ shouldn't then create ../build/ - it's
> > > not nice!
> >
> > An alternate perspective - I like the fact that building a cvs checkout
> > does not modify the checkout itself.
>
> +1 !
>
I would be inclined to change 'not nice' to 'potentially dangerous', because any build
script that alters files outside the checkout by default may cause harm. It relies on
assumptions that:
1. developers have write access to the parent directory
2. creating a "build" directory in the parent directory is not a problem or
nuisance to the management of other files on the hard-disc.
3. different projects will create subdirectories of the "build" directory and
these subdirectory names will never clash, despite the huge number of open source
projects in existence.
If you have a directory of open source projects on your hard drive, lets call it
"opensource". Inside that you put all your open source work in separate checkout
directories: "jakarta-tomcat", "jakarta-ant", "argouml", "xml-cocoon", "omega",
"build", "somethingelse".
You make them all and... disaster... All the jakarta projects have put their builds
into named directories inside the directory with my favourite "build" build tool -
messing it up with extra files that are nothing to do with it. Then "omega"
completely wiped my build directory when I did a clean build - it doesn't use
subdirectories of "../build".
I don't want to knock the neatness of keeping everything in a cvs checkout clean and
identical to the original, but what are the practical disadvantages of having the
build directory inside the checkout, especially if a 'clean' build cleans out the
build stuff automatically if you require?
Being able to build outside of the checkout is an option some users may prefer, but I
don't think we should be providing this as a default unless we can be sure of the 3
assumptions above.
Stuart.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stuart Roebuck [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lead Developer Mac OS X, Java, XML, etc.
ADOLOS http://www.adolos.com/
