Hallo!

On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 11:12:42 +0100, I <thomas@schwinge.name> wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Jan 2011 06:58:59 +1000, Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> wrote:
> > Rather than documenting a limitation here, why don't we do what people
> > actually want.
> 
> Well, not a big deal for me -- I'm just used to building projects
> containing a configure file outside of the source tree, and the notmuch
> build machinery at first accepted this, but then fell over.
> 
> 
> > What do other build systems generally do when running configure from
> > some other directory?
> 
> What Rob said -- but: why re-invent Autoconf / Automake if it's already
> there?  I totally admit that the GNU Autotools have their ugly corners
> (and indeed a lot of these), but on the other hand they do solve some
> issues quite nicely.
> 
> You surely had reasons to not use these tools, and that's fine with me.
> (And I'm not especially interested in working on build systems -- done
> that enough in the past.)  Have you looked at other tools before going
> for the straight-forward (and that is very fine!) Makefile-based
> solution?

OK -- I found the thread starting at
id:"1258897630-22282-1-git-send-email-jeff@ocjtech.us", where this has
been discussed already (as I should have expected).  ;-)

Still, my point holds that (unless someone is willing to spend time on
this, of course) we shouldn't try to replicate the Autotools, but instead
keep our system as simple as it currently is, and thus just have it fail
if configured outside of the source tree.


Grüße,
 Thomas