On Tue, 21 Jan 2003, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> The documentation on building the toolchain is similarly obscure.  If I 
> think the tools haven't changed -- the usual case, if I haven't gone 
> very long since the last time I build the world -- I *think* I need -T, 
> but -t and -b seem to be in that space, too, though I *thinkI* I never 
> want them...

It's safe (and probably a good idea) to use "-T TOOLDIR" every time
you use build.sh.  You probably never want "-b" to build a new "bmake"
executable, because it's implied by almost everything else; but you do
need "-b" to prevent "-i INSTALLWORLDDIR" from cleaning and rebuilding
everything (Grrr).  I use "-t" often, to build tools without building
anything else, but you might never need it, because build.sh will
usually rebuild tools if necessary.

My biggest gripe about build.sh is that some of the options that set
variables (-T TOOLDIR, -O MAKEOBJDIR, -M MAKEOBJDIRPREFIX, -D DESTDIR)
simply set the variables, whereas others have the side effect of
implying actions to be performed (-R RELEASEDIR, -i INSTALLWORLDDIR).  I
would prefer it if the options that set variables did not have any side
effects.  For example, I want to be able to say "set RELEASEDIR to this
value" without also implying "make release".  This would make it much
easier to write wrappers around build.sh.

My second biggest gripe (which might be a subset of the above) is about
the fact that the "-i INSTALLWORLDDIR" option implies making a release,
instead of just installing an already-built release.  OK, you can force
it to be sensible by saying "-b -i INSTALLWORLDDIR" instead of just "-i
INSTALLWORLDDIR", but it's easy to forget.

--apb (Alan Barrett)