Re: the 'build' debian/rules target
On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 03:57, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 01:40:34AM -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> > I don't quite understand the point of having the 'build' target be
> > mandatory.
>
> dpkg-buildpackage requires it. You'd have to make it fail gracefully if
> the build target wasn't there, and probably get this into a stable
> release in order not to royally confuse users trying to build packages
> on stable.
Sure.
> Also, I find 'debian/rules build' a useful finger macro
I agree, it's a useful target, but that's not what we're discussing.
> This confuses me. The build target makes perfect sense here; it just
> builds two temporary trees. With appropriate use of VPATH in the build
> system this is quite easy.
There are a lot of broken upstream build systems which won't work under
VPATH builds. Hell, I even mess it up occasionally even using Automake
because I always forget to run 'make distcheck'.
My point is that the current situation where 'build' is required but it
may do nothing is a bit silly.
But the more I think about it, while it's silly, packages which do
nothing in 'build' are rare, and we should work to make them extinct :)
By keeping 'build' required we're encouraging them to do so.
So I guess I'm ok with the current situation.
Reply to: