[Gretl-devel] building gretl

Hello all, I'd like to test the water for a change in the gretl build process which could be unpopular but which I think is needed -- namely, disallowing building of gretl in the source tree. Right now you can do ./configure and make in the top level of the gretl source tree -- either a released source package or gretl-git. Under my proposal you'd have to use a parallel tree or subtree. I'll illustrate with reference to gretl-git. Parallel: Make a build directory at the same level in the directory hierarchy as gretl git. In that directory, do ../gretl-git/configure ; make Subtree: Make a build directory inside gretl-git, and in that directory do ../configure ; make This is a much cleaner way of proceeding: generated files are kept separate from files under version control. It's now enforced for many complex open-source projects. In gretl's case it would simplify several Makefiles in which, at present, we have to allow for either creating symlinks into the source tree to get access to certain files (the "right" method) or finding those files in the build tree already (with an in-source build). Enforcing this policy is quite simple. There's code to that effect in gretl's configure.ac at present, but commented out. Allin