[plt-dev] in-place build directory (was re: build error with svn 14677)

On May  1, Carl Eastlund wrote:
> 
> 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.

The problems come from autoconf and from svn updating a source tree --
so "our system" is wrong here...


> 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.

How would you do that?  The only possiblity is to have `svn update'
remove files, and that's not a plt problem.  Another solution is to
have a `make clean' target that removes all non-svn files, but that's
impractical given that the target would be in a makefile that should
itself be removed.


> 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.

That was my initial thought.  Something that would first introduce a
build then talk about the details.  But I couldn't come to a
conclusion of how to actually write this in a short time.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!