bkhl@elektrubadur.se (Björn Lindström) writes:
> Michel Schinz <Michel.Schinz@epfl.ch> writes:
>
>> For me it would be very little work. But it would mean that all
>> package authors would need to make the distinction between
>> "compilation" and "installation". That's one more thing they have to
>> worry about,
>
> Not really. You can make it backwards compatible by just adding an
> option to just do the build phase (and maybe one to do just the
> install phase, if it's tricky to have it decide whether the build
> phase has been done or not), and still have the default behaviour be
> to do it all at once.
The problem if I add such an option is that the currently existing
packages would simply ignore it. So yes, it would be "backward
compatible" but if you tried to use that option with current packages,
it would have no effect. This is not something I would consider
acceptable, as it would give the impression that the installation
library and/or the package definition are broken.
(Just to be clear, there is currently *no* distinction between a
"build" and an "install" phase in package definitions. There's a
single function whose aim is to do whatever has to be done in order
for the package to be installed, and this is it. Sometimes this
implies a compilation, sometimes not.)
Michel.
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