"Nathan J. Williams" <nathanw@wasabisystems.com> writes:
> "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:
> 
> > "Nathan J. Williams" <nathanw@wasabisystems.com> writes:
> > > I hate global configuration files for tools. They're a hidden
> > > dependancy on system state, and they tend to bite me when
> > > another user uses the system or I want to do a "plain" build.
> > 
> > So don't use them...
> 
> Someone else will use them and hurt themselves and I will have to
> debug it.

How about if it prints out a nice "WARNING: using build.conf" at the start?

> > > Please don't do this. Write your own wrapper script and keep it
> > > somewhere convenient for you.
> > 
> > This is a real pain in the neck a lot of the time. Everyone writes
> > their own wrapper script, too, which is a waste of everyone's time
> > when everyone wants the same functionality....
> 
> If they want the same functionality than there should be no need for
> the configuration file; change build.sh to do what "everyone" wants.

Er, no.

Different people have different nice large bits of space mounted in
different places where they want to put their build arenas, where they
want their tar files stuffed when sets get built, etc. RELEASE,
DESTDIR, whether they one objdirs, etc. Typing in all that data over
and over and over again is silly.

However, one can't set it "just once" in our current setup.

> Machine-specific configuration files are harmful. The onus is on you
> to demonstrate why per-machine configuration of a source tree tool
> makes even the slightest amount of sense. Per-source tree, maybe. But
> per-machine? Absolutely not.

Different machines probably have space in different places. This is
really a question of stuff like DESTDIR.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com