Re: etcupdate and postinstall: make "-s src" compulsory

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2008, Christos Zoulas wrote:
> >>   * many people keep their sources elsewhere than /usr/src;
> >> 
> >>   * etcupdate, when given a source directory, attempts to run "make
> >>     distribution" in ${SRCDIR}/etc, and this often fails.  Fixing the
> >>     make failures is non trivial, and I really don't care about fixing
> >>     them because I always recommend that people should use "etcupdate -s
> >>     etc.tgz".
> >> 
> >> So, I'd like to make it an error to run postinstall or etcupdate without
> >> giving a "-s" arg.  People can still use "-s /usr/src" to get the
> >> existing (IMHO broken) behaviour.
> >
> >There were no objections to that suggestion, so I'd like to implement it
> >soon.
> 
> I use /usr/src and I am perfectly happy. Why break it?

The default behaviout has always been broken.  It runs "make
distribution" in the etc subdirectory, and there have been many problem
reports due to this "make distribution" using options different from
those in effect when the rest of the tree is built.  For example, if
obj dirs are used in one case but not the other, then there have been
problems when etcupdate tries to build MAKEDEV.

Because the default behaviour is broken, I don't want it to be the
default (though it would continue to be available if you explicitly ask
for "-s /usr/src").

--apb (Alan Barrett)