Presently, building grep from a readonly source directory (via the VPATH feature) does not work. On an ordinary build, the Makefile attempts to write the file "doc/stamp-vti" in the source directory.
It seems the Makefile expects that precompiled info files are to be distributed in the source directory, as is typical for GNU software -- so Makefile rules that write into $(srcdir) are OK since they will only trigger when the documentation is changed on the maintainer's own system. Unfortunately, it seems that the precompiled info file(s) and supporting version.texi file are not actually present in the grep-2.5.3 distribution. (Actually, this is only when the --disable-nls option is given to configure -- otherwise the build similarly crashes earlier trying to write "po/stamp-cat-id" in the source directory.) ---- Michael Deutschmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
