Re: [Nasm-devel] building outside the source directory

[Ed B. <be...@mi...>]

On 08/28/2018 03:24 PM, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 01:52:43PM -0400, Ed Beroset wrote:
>> Today, for the first time in a long time, I refreshed my local copy of the
>> NASM repo and tried to do a built outside the source directory, as is my
>> usual practice.  It failed.
>>
>> Specifically, if you clone the source into a fresh new directory "nasm" and
>> then create and navigate into "nasm/build" I would expect the following
>> steps to successfully do a build:
>>
>> autoreconf .. -i
>> ../configure
>> make
>>
>> However it fails because of the generated file pptok.sh
>>
>> I believe I can fix this, but before I expend the effort to do so, I wanted
>> ask some questions:
>>
>> 1. can you reproduce this problem?
>> 2. do you agree it should be fixed?
>>
>> Thanks.
> 
> Hi Ed! Why did you enter nasm/build? Usually I personally run ./autogen.sh
> from root source directory. Would it work for you?

Hi Cyrill,

Yes, it works from the root source directory, but only from there.  One 
of the features of autotools is that it's supposed to allow one to run 
"configure" from anywhere and build successfully.  One reason for doing 
that is that it keeps the source tree (mostly) free of build artifacts.

Another common use of this feature is to create both release and debug 
versions (in two separate locations) from the same source.  See 
https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/VPATH-Builds.html 
for example.

Ed