srcdir == objdir build issues [SC take note]

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May  9, 2003, DJ Delorie <dj@delorie.com> wrote:

> It also added a maintenance headache for the "synthetic" top-level
> Makefile, since every target in the real Makefile would have to be
> replicated

Not every target, only the standard ones, such as all, install, clean,
possibly bootstrap.  Or we could just finish ./configure by printing a
message such as:

        since the build instructions suggest you should build in a
        directory separate from the source tree, we went ahead and
        created it for you.  To build, cd to that directory and then
        make bootstrap or make all will work.

This will break for people who automate it with ./configure; make;
make install, but GCC has had a non-standard build procedure forever
(we recommend make bootstrap, not make), and the error may actually be
a good opportunity for people to actually read the installation
instructions.  Especially if the message actually points people at
it.

Hmm...  But then, why not go ahead and just fail to configure anyway.
Yeah...  It makes sense as well.  Maybe even more sense...

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                 aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer