From: Rob Browning <rlb@defaultvalue.org>
To: Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Have to configure and build inside the source directory.
References: <1294747284-18791-1-git-send-email-thomas@schwinge.name>
	<87bp30n3sc.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:18:16 -0600
In-Reply-To: <87bp30n3sc.fsf@yoom.home.cworth.org> (Carl Worth's message of
	"Sat, 29 Jan 2011 06:58:59 +1000")
Message-ID: <87ei7wty6f.fsf@raven.defaultvalue.org>
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Cc: notmuch@notmuchmail.org, Thomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name>
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Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> writes:

> What do other build systems generally do when running configure from
> some other directory? Copy/link the Makefiles and then construct them
> carefully such that they can find all the source files?

I think the use of GNU make VPATH is fairly common.  For example, I
believe the autotools build a tree that matches the srcdir structure and
add Makefiles that contain something like this:

  VPATH = ../../wherever/notmuch/thisdir
  ...

Of course, given that, the build tree doesn't include any source files.

FWIW
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org
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