Re: [Tinycc-devel] VPATH builds

[grischka]

Akim Demaille wrote:
> Well, the shell is eager to complete on "tests" on tab.
> And the Autotools support "make check", so it is quite
> common.  There is no need to remove "test", check can
> be a simple alias.

Forget it.

> I can provide help to provide other useful targets, such 
> as "make dist" and "make distcheck".

Thomas who manages a distro (debian) might want to comment.

> Actually, is it on purpose that Autoconf and Automake are
> not used?

I think so.  Tinycc is fast and small.  The Autospam chain stands for
being obscenely slow and bloated.  Using it would damage Tinycc's karma.

> > Anyway, if you want to revamp our tiny testsuite per se, for example
> > split the tcctest.c mess into single tests (or theme related chunks)
> > and/or integrate that with the (by someone recently added) tests2 stuff
> > then I'll certainly not object to that. ;=)
>
> I have still plenty to discover about tcc, but I'll have
> a look :)

Great.

> What do you think about the VPATH-builds related changes?

I think it can't hurt provided it works.  Build directories for
the cross-compilers (arm-tcc etc ...) would be nice too.

Btw, the term "VPATH-builds" seems to be an autospam metabolite, also.
I've actually never seen it and it is not very descriptive either,
because
a) it assumes specific knowledge about make's VPATH mechanism, but
b) if you happen to share that knowledge then you also know that VPATH
   and "Out-of-Tree build" play on quite different levels.

Of course, support in make for platforms, modules, directories, options,
(that is for anything but the most simple hello_world), is very weak,
traditionally and still.

In an ideal world make would offer name- and option-spaces natively
nowadays, and autospam would just bitrot somewhere as the small script
that it was once before it became a virus.  ... I got distracted.

--- grischka