On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 12:15:18PM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
  | Luke Mewburn wrote:
  | > 
  | > On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 10:56:30AM -0400, William Allen Simpson wrote:
  | >   | So, throughout the documentation, './build.sh  build' should be changed
  | >   | to './build.sh distribution'?  That does match the proposed building(8)
  | >   | man page example....
  | > 
  | > Which documentation specifically?  src/BUILDING, or something else?
  | > 
  | I was looking at: 
  |   Changes/index.list
  |   Documentation/updating.list
  |   Documentation/cross/index.list
  |   Documentation/current/index.list
  |   Documentation/kernel/index.list
  | 
  | I thought from its layout that src/BUILDING was on its way to being a 
  | man page?  That's what I meant by proposed building(8).  
  | 
  | Of course, as mentioned before by Bellovin on 17 Jun 2003, it would need 
  | a lot of reorganization.  I'd recommend splitting into 2 documents, 
  | where ./build.sh is documented in building(8), and all the make 
  | variables are still hidden away in src/BUILDING.

It's unfortunate that the existing information is inconsistent in this
manner.  I've generally been trying to keep BUILDING in sync, but I
have not tried to keep the web site up to date.  BUILDING is in effect
`building(8)', but it isn't install that way, although it could be
(should be ?)

I'll see what we can do about improving this in the future, including
the suggestion of a building(8) man page


  | > "./build.sh -E distribution" allows DESTDIR = /.
  | > (if you're clueful enough to fix problems that occurred because you
  | > used -E, there's no reason to enforce "buildworld"'s DESTDIR!=/
  | > semantics).
  | 
  | Saw that!  Sorry, but in over a decade of building various *nix flavors, 
  | I've always avoided directly building into /.  Call me conservative, but 
  | I don't intend to start anytime soon :-)

I agree, and I would personally prefer to not provide -E at all.
However, there are clueful developers who requested this functionality,
so it is provided for them.  If their systems break from using it,
they know how to fix them.

IMO, non of our "officially recommended" build process documentation,
including that on our web site, should be suggesting the use of -E,
because the behaviour of that switch (building to DESTDIR=/) has
arguably been the cause of a significant chunk of "support problems
that shouldn't have happened".


Luke.