Darren Reed wrote:

> What I expected to find, when building a release, was to be able to build
> it just like any other application - that is prior to installation, it
> doesn't disturb the running setup in any way and stays self contained.
> Is this goal possible to achieve ?

For all situations, I don't think so - what about the compiler for
example?  NetBSD 1.3.3 used gcc 2.7.2.2 and -current of the time was
using egcs 1.1.<something>.  The same would more-or-less apply to just
building a release - what if you were building 1.4.1 on a 1.4 system?
By using a DESTDIR you don't scribble on your existing system, but you
are using the existing system to build the release, which isn't self
contained...

Simon.