[Buildroot] Design issue with the out-of-tree support

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@free-electrons.com>]

Dear Arnout Vandecappelle,

On Mon, 27 May 2013 21:44:19 +0200, Arnout Vandecappelle wrote:

> > For now, I consider doing the prepare step even on OVERRIDE_SRCDIR
> > package, even if that means that we are modifying the source directory.
> 
>   Given that we've recently accepted some patches that solve problems of 
> non-writeable source directories, I don't think this is appropriate. I 
> think it's a valid use case to use OVERRIDE_SRCDIR to define the custom 
> source of a package, which is located in some shared directory. Having 
> random builds modifying that source is not appropriate.
> 
>   And now is the time to define this behaviour - changing it later can be 
> considered "ABI breakage".

Right.

What about packages that are using the "local" site method (which
basically, are equivalent to doing OVERRIDE_SRCDIR) ?

I know some people (or, said otherwise, customers) that use the local
SITE_METHOD for autotools-based components. Those are version
controlled, and of course, only configure.ac + Makefile.am are version
controlled. So, when the build starts, "something" should do the
autoreconf.

If Buildroot doesn't do it, who will do it? The user manually, when
there are 30+ software components? Doesn't seem really practical and
realistic.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, Free Electrons
Kernel, drivers, real-time and embedded Linux
development, consulting, training and support.
http://free-electrons.com