Re: [PATCH 4/6] Makefile: make INSTALL_SYMLINKS affect the build directory

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 31, 2021, 14:04 UTC
Message-ID: <87sg4bl8qn.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqo8f1h9ra.fsf@gitster.g>

On Tue, Mar 30 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <avarab@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Change the INSTALL_SYMLINKS flag to also affect whether a built-in
>> like e.g. git-fetch is a symlink or not in git's build directory.
>>
>> This doesn't matter for anything other than as an aid to developers
>> who might be confused about their build not matching the installation,
>> and who'd like to be reminded that e.g. "git-fetch" is a built-in by
>> "ls" coloring appropriately it as a symlink.
>
> I am not with the cause and hence not very interested in this
> "feature".
>
> When there are multiple possible reasons why something is made into
> a symbolic link, the symlink-ness in the build directory cannot
> fundamentally mirror the symlink-ness in the installation, no?
> "git" and "git-fetch" may be in the same directory in the build, but
> their installation directories are different, so they may be
> hardlinked in the former but they may be turned into symlinks in the
> latter.

This won't be the case after 6/6 in INSTALL_FALLBACK_LN_CP. I'll make some note of it here.

In practice I think this fallback mode is useful to almost nobody, so being able to have the build directory mirror the install for development purposes makes things much more obvious.