On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 09:55:57 +0100, Thomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name> wrote:
> Is the testsuite also easy to convert to VPATH style builds?  (I don't
> know, but would expect some difficulties.)

In what I just pushed I rather punted on this issue. I made the
configure script simply copy the entire test suite into the build
directory. (I also did the same for .el files since emacs really wants
to put the compiled .elc file right next to the .el file).

This isn't ideal since it means that a non-srcdir build won't get access
to updated emacs nor test-suite bits without re-running configure. If
someone would like to do work to fix either or both of these cases, that
would be helpful.

> And, another thing I just noticed: I had the source tree configured with
> --prefix=[something].  Now I updated the sources, re-ran make, and saw
> this:
> 
>     $ make
>     
>     Note: Calling ./configure with no command-line arguments.

Thanks for pointing out this problem. It was easy to fix, and I've
pushed a change for that now. In testing it, I also realized that my
support for non-srcdir builds also broke the automatic running of
configure on a simple "make" invocation from a source tree that had
never been configured. I've fixed that now as well.

> My --prefix=[something] is gone.  (At least the build system warns about
> this.)  But it's another issue that other build systems already have
> solved.  (And, I probably wouldn't have expected that to do the right
> thing if the configure script / build system wouldn't try to be like GNU
> Autoconf.)

I agree that trying to be similar and being slightly different can be
more surprising than being obviously different. For the build system, I
actually do want compatibility with the features of
GNU-autoconf-generated build system that people actually care about. So
please keep letting me know about any annoying surprises.

-Carl

-- 
carl.d.worth@intel.com