configure/make/make install with moving srcdir, builddir...

[Mark Mitchell]

--On Thursday, July 04, 2002 02:20:29 PM -0700 Geoff Keating 
<geoffk@geoffk.org> wrote:

>> Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 10:18:11 -0700
>> From: Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com>
>
>> --On Thursday, July 04, 2002 12:36:38 PM -0400 DJ Delorie
>> <dj@redhat.com>  wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >> I think that's fine.  And if we can really simplify our makefiles
>> >> that's worth more than being able to change the $srcdir around.  We
>> >> can always add that later if someone really, really needs it.
>> >
>> > What about the case where you do a build on one machine, and do "make
>> > install" on many others with different mount points?  Doesn't that
>> > need to know where srcdir is, yet srcdir is a different location for
>> > them?
>>
>> Yes -- but this is exactly the kind of thing that I think we can live
>> without.
>>
>> I know people do this; I know it's convenient.
> ...
>
> It may be that it's easier to replace this usage with another
> convenient way to do things.  For instance, GCC is supposed to be
> location-independent; perhaps we could ask that people who would use
> 'make install' to install on multiple machines in different places
> instead use the (well-tested and often-used) facilities to install in
> an alternative directory, and then use 'tar' or a package management
> tool to move the binaries to where they need to go.

That's a possibility as well.

In either case, we agree that we don't need this facility in the new
Makefiles before we check them in.

Thanks,

--
Mark Mitchell                   mark@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC               http://www.codesourcery.com