On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Ted Lemon wrote:

> > Historically, the top-level Makefile's `build' target has been used by
> > people who are keeping close tabs on the development of the system.
> 
> Historically, ``make build'' is used by everybody who tracks -current.
> Some people build every day.  Some build once a week.  Some build once
> a month.  Some build whenever they do a new install (that's me!).

By examining the history of the build target, it is clear that using it 
for anything other than frequent builds has never been supported.  Since
the majority of the user base runs releases and does not track -current,
this is relatively reasonable.

> There is no one single kind of customer for ``make build.''  Consider:
> is it an accident that you identify the most important customer for
> ``make build'' as yourself?   I don't think so - I think we each see
> this problem from our own equally valid perspective.

I find it quite interesting that you interpreted it that way.  The fact of
the matter is that I am personally part of the frequent build group only a
week or two out of every 2 months.  There are others, however, that do
daily and weekly builds.  It would be Really Bad if a daily build took
longer than a day. :-)

> The right solution to this problem, which I am merely proposing here
> and not suggesting you implement, is that the top-level makefile
> should maintain a registry in /var/pkg or somewhere like that of what
> version of utilities like this is installed.  [...]

Interesting, should work, but how about something that's far simpler to
implement and doesn't require a tone of infrastructure?  Create an
`upgrade' target that builds the prerequisites, then does a `${MAKE}
build' as the last step.  (This target would probably not do anything for
a non-root DESTDIR.)

--scott