On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 8:20 PM, Eli Barzilay <e...@barzilay.org> wrote: > On May 1, John Clements wrote: >> >> On May 1, 2009, at 5:01 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote: >> >> > The problem with this, so that it's now turned around: >> > >> > 1. Select (or create) a build directory. It is better to run the >> > build in a different directory rather than use this directory. >> > >> > This reads like a specific instruction to create a build >> > directory. It's an option that is very useful for people who will >> > hold the directory for a long time, but these people are still a >> > minority. Most people will compile from source once, or will >> > compile from source once after every release. >> >> So what? Does it matter if everyone creates a build directory? > > It only matters in being more complicated than it could be. You only > need a brief look at Matthew's version of the file to know that > > ./configure; make; make install > > should work as expected, and I think that it is desirable to keep this > property. (But just to clarify, the README file is something that > Matthew writes and maintains, so I don't want to commit a change that > I'm not willing to defend personally.)
I agree that it's nice to have the normal Unix-style build strategy of "./configure && make && make install" as a default, but in our system it's not a very good default. We should present a default that is robust in the face of updating the source and rebuilding. Now, if we want to change our configure/make scripts to make this possible, that would be nice. In the meantime, I prefer "mkdir build && cd build && ../configure && make && make install" to the more familiar but less practical version. In fact, I should really write a "quick-start" introduction with that line -- there's no particular reason people just "trying out" the build should have to scroll through several pages to figure out five default commands. -- Carl Eastlund _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev
