Re: Building Emacs out of source tree?

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2024 13:54:21 +0100
> From: <tomas@tuxteam.de>
> 
> after a while, I'm trying again to pick up the custom of
> compiling Emacs.
> 
> Usually, I compiled in an empty build directory, invoking
> ../emacs/configure.

That is the correct way.

> This used to work pretty well but doesn't seem to these
> days. I hit two-and-a-half snags:
> 
> - one missing chartab.o which happened to lie around 
>   in the source dir under src; copying it over to the
>   corresponding spot in the build dir let the build
>   continue

How come?  chartab.c is just one of the source files, and is not
mentioned specially in any Makefile, AFAICT.  Why is that file somehow
missing, and others aren't?  Please investigate why.  (Could it be
your src tree was not clean of all the *.o files?)

> - one missing symbol rpl_chmodat; this gets defined in
>   some header -- sneaking a strategically placed
> 
>     #undef rpl_chmodat

If this is on GNU/Linux, then you shouldn't need to have any
rpl_chmodat anywhere.  I just searched my source/build tree on
GNU/Linux, and didn't find rpl_chmodat anywhere.  So once again,
please investigate.

And in any case, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with
out-of-tree builds, does it?

> Now I'd be willing to gather more details for a bug report if
> there is an interest in keeping out of source tree compiles
> viable; for me those aren't that crucial anymore, with the
> advent of git and of 1TB+ disks.
> 
> What do you think? Do we still care for out of source builds?

Of course we do.  They are supported and should continue to be
supported.