Re: Emacs in CVS as today does not build - emacs depends on *.elc, which cannot be built without emacs

[Steven Tamm <steventamm@mac.com>]

For the make-package script in the Mac OS X, it will run make bootstrap 
if lisp/abbrev.elc is missing.
What would be the argument(s) against adding to the root Makefile a 
dependency on a specific .elc file that would force "make bootstrap" if 
starting from scratch?  It is not "doing it right", but it seems to 
work.

-Steven

On Thursday, October 31, 2002, at 09:01  AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>> Most, if not all, of those projects I have retrieved from CVS I have
>> been able to use the "./configure; make; make install" incantation, 
>> so -
>> recognizing that Emacs is a large and complex program with different
>> needs to most other programs - I would still like to know what the
>> reason for this is.
>
> It can be done, but Emacs' Makefile has not been worked on sufficiently
> to allow it to both work and be fast: checking whether bootstrap
> is needed or not can be costly if you want to do it right (it's OK,
> tho, since we can just be conservative as we do now) but more 
> importantly
> the best way to bootstrap is not always the same and since 
> bootstrapping
> can take a while...