Re: problem with subdir-objects and not found .Plo files when migrating to 1.14

[Diego Elio Pettenò]

On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 11:27 PM, Sergey 'Jin' Bostandzhyan <address@hidden
> wrote:

> Interesting opinion, however, just an opinion and not a fact.
>

An opinion of a distro packager who's been dealing with similar stuff for
years...


> I've been
> using the same "build" approach in MediaTomb and we got packaged for almost
> all available distros. Not once have I heard complaints about the build
> directory, and why should I anyway? Packagers don't care about things like
> that as long as "make install" works properly and respects ${prefix}.
>

You have a very naïve idea of how packaging works. And if you didn't hear
any complain it means you haven't listened very carefully. Given I actually
was the original packager for mediatomb for Gentoo, and that I did so
because there was no alternative, I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking
about. It's not a coincidence that I dropped it quite quickly.


> Well, so far I have not heard a single technical argument on why I should
> not be doing things that way.
>
> "Very bad idea" and "don't be special" qualify for arguments of personal
> taste,
> and that's what I love Linux for: it gives you the freedom to do things the
> way that is most productive to _you_. Actually, if noone was ever clever
> and
> special we'd probably be using MS DOS.
>

Yadda yadda. You haven't given a technical argument for your choice either.
It's just aesthetics and convenience for your make command. While on the
other hand you have consistency for the people that cater your software to
users.

You want technical? As you can see by the warnings issued by automake 1.14,
non-subdir-objects build are going to go away at some point because they
require much more maintenance than it's worth, just because of aesthetics,
isn't that enough? I would also add that you're trying to be clever with a
build system while not really groking it, which is more than dangerous.

Good luck, but definitely I'll mark down your project as a "do not go
near". I've had enough headaches with mediatomb.