On Fri, 7 Apr 2006, Alan Barrett wrote:

> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
> > I think -U is used to indicate that when building sets a non-root user
> > is doing the build.  This, I suspect, circumvents some file ownership
> > tests.
>
> Yes, "-U" means that the build is being done by an unprivileged
> user.  The main effect is that "make install" doesn't actually try to
> chown/chmod anything, but just writes information to the METALOG.
>
> Builds with or without -U are supposed to work in a read-only directory.

Actually, thats kind of how I understood it too.  I read the BUILDING file
a bit closer and I think I was just distracted by -U.

> src/gnu/dist/binutils/binutils/arlex.c is in the CVS repository, so I
> don't know why the build was trying to create it.

I guess its a feature of the reachover - its a file that needs to be
made, so it will be made in the objdir and it doesnt exist so it is being
made, but I dont know why lex is told to make it in the srcdir.

If I remove it, that specific make (in gnu/usr.bin/binutils/ar) works
fine, because it makes yy.lex.c, compiles it to arlex.o and deletes it all
in the obj directory, but build.sh fails making tools because it doesnt
exist :)

iain