Obsolete building in source dir?

[Zack Weinberg]

DJ Delorie <dj@redhat.com> writes:

>> Could someone remind me what was wrong with the "if configure
>> notices it's been invoked in the source directory, create a build
>> directory behind the user's back" idea?  That wouldn't break all the
>> time.
>
> It's the "behind the user's back" that's a problem.  I think that we
> should either make it do what the user expected, or tell the user they
> can't do that, but to do something the user doesn't expect is bad.

Given all the weird stuff we do _anyway_ - invoking subconfigures from
the Makefile instead of the top level configure, building stuff
multiple times with different compilers, etc. etc. - I don't see this
as that much more surprising.  Just to be clearly documented.

> Plus, the toplevel stuff is shared among many projects, and only gcc
> has a problem with building in srcdir.

This raises the question of why gcc has the problem and the other
projects don't.  I venture to speculate it's because of the bootstrap
logic.  If I'm right, then toplevel bootstrap offers a chance to make
it go away (or, turnabout, to spread the problem to more projects).

zw