Hi list,

Please Cc: me when replying.

First sorry, this is surely a very stupid question.

I come from FreeBSD where there are mostly two targets at the top
level (buildworld and installworld with possibly DESTDIR set).

I've read src/BUILDING as well as chapter 28 of the NetBSD guide,
but I obviously lack sharpness because I'm experiencing difficulties
to understand the point of having both the distribution/buildworld and
installworld targets.

So, what is the big picture ?

I would say that :
* NetBSD's ``build'' target performs mostly the same as FreeBSD's
 ``buildworld'';
* NetBSD's ``buildworld'' performs the same as FreeBSD's
  ``installworld'' with DESTDIR=/some/path;
* NetBSD's ``installworld'' is used to install the fresh system
  standing in /some/path into /;
* Finally, using NetBSD's ``distribution'' with an empty DESTDIR
  makes ``installworld'' useless.

But even considering I could get the whole picture, I don't understand
the purpose of this.  Still I'm sure you are all clever fellows and you
did it this way because of some higher picture I could grasp by myself.

Any shred of explanation would be welcome, but I would obviously
prefer a thorough one :-).

Thank you.
Best regards,
-- 
Jeremie Le Hen
< jeremie at le-hen dot org >< ttz at chchile dot org >