Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> I've been thinking that we could actually get rid of that build-in-srcdir
> behavior, which also occasionally puzzles vpath users with respect to gram.c
> and so on. The new behavior would be to build targets in the local directory.
> The only requirement would be that distribution tarballs be built in-tree, so
> that the stuff that is distprep'ed actually ends up in the tarball, but I
> think that should not be a problem.
I think one of the arguments for the current behavior is that the
derived files are platform-independent, so this way saves work if you
are building several sets of binaries from the same source tree.
However, I don't know of anyone actively making use of that behavior
--- and if they did want to, they'd likely use a tarball not a CVS
pull anyway.
Having all the derived files in the build directory definitely seems
to me to reduce the complexity and surprise factor, so +1 for changing.
regards, tom lane