Re: the 'build' debian/rules target
On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 12:55:09PM -0700, Chris Waters wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 08:57:21AM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> > Also, I find 'debian/rules build' a useful finger macro for when I just
> > want to debug something small in a package and don't want to build the
> > actual binary package
>
> That's great for a small package which can actually run in place, but
> many packages need, e.g., to find support files at their proper
> hard-coded locations or they won't work.
Usually either an environment variable (à la groff, which I'm rather
familiar with) or some minor build system hack is quite enough to deal
with that. It's rarely difficult.
> > I would be very disappointed if this no longer worked consistently.
>
> I hate to break it to you, but this already doesn't work consistently. :)
Consistently enough IME. I do this a lot.
> > This confuses me. The build target makes perfect sense here; it just
> > builds two temporary trees.
>
> But build is generally used as the equivalent of make, not make
> install. But to create two trees, you need to do a make install
> (twice).
Eh? No you don't. I'm not talking about debian/tmp-a-likes, I'm talking
about trees in which you run make. Plenty of packages support that or
can easily be made to do so (if nothing else, they can always 'cp -a'
the build tree, although that's not optimal).
> I object to a proposal that will make my package buggy just to gain
> benefits that still won't exist for my package even if I *do* "fix"
> it.
What proposal? I'm objecting to a proposal that deletes the requirement
for the build target to exist. I suggest that it should do something,
and I'm fairly sure that if I could be bothered I could make it do
something useful for your packages, but I don't think the onus is on me
here.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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