I guess this is expected, since a change in a build system might affect all packages being built with it. But I was wondering if there is a way to force only building the packages specified on the command line. Does such a thing exists?No, it doesn’t exist, because that would be building something different. In this case, building everything that depends on ‘ant-build-system.scm’ is unavoidable.I was wondering what is the most efficient way to quickly iterate on changes to a build system, without recompiling the whole world for that build system. How would you do that?There’s no ideal solution as you’ll have to recompile the world anyway.
It is possible, actually, to test it for a single package first
(although without interaction with the command line). In the
package you would like to test things with, use '=>' in
#:imported-modules:
((this module)
((that module) => (local-file "customised-that-module.scm")))
and keep the original that/module.scm unmodified.
At least, something like that is done in 'build-program' in
build-aux/build-self.scm -- I haven't tried it out for something
like this myself.
Greetings,
Maxime