Re: Cleanup initialization of configure process (issue 549350043 by address@hidden)

[Dan Eble]

On Jan 15, 2020, at 03:08, address@hidden wrote:
> 
> Maybe I misunderstood your process; aren't you firing up a fresh
> container for every build?

No, I leave the container running, open an interactive shell into it, and use 
it for a relatively long time.  It is quite like how a VM would be used, but 
the container holds just the tools required for building, testing, and 
debugging.  Tasks like source control and editing occur on the host.

> Just as a thought, then you
> could run autogen.sh once on the host in the beginning (or have a second
> container that is allowed to write, but only runs autoconf).

I couldn't run autoconf on the host, because autoconf is not installed on the 
host.
I could define a second service with write access for running autoconf.

But is the root of this problem write permission, or separate source and build 
directories?  Allowing writing to my source tree is something I am willing to 
consider.  Storing 4GB of build output in my source tree is something I have 
good reasons (mentioned earlier) to resist.

> I can
> probably live with the found solution for now, let's see how often it
> causes headaches in the future.

It doesn't seem like the kind of problem that would tend to multiply.

> As my comment already hints to, I'm all in favor to drop (at the least
> the current version number from) VERSION. I have a patch or two that get
> rid of some scripts that rely on VERSION and instead use files generated
> by configure. However I don't understand what "make website" does and
> how it is used in production right now, so the file is not going away in
> the next days. But that's not really the topic of this patch.

I agree that it's wise to avoid disturbing `make website` for now.  My point is 
that, if revising `make website` might eliminate the need for the kludge, then 
it is premature to require me to change my build environment.  I'm not asking 
you to understand it all now, but to understand it before asking me to cope 
with it.  I'm glad to hear that you are willing to live with the kluge for now.
— 
Dan