Re: 5.3.1

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Dec 22,  8:03am, Ray Andrews wrote:
} Subject: Re: 5.3.1
}
} Marvellous.  Five years kicking around in Linux and I only learn this 
} now.

apt-get build-dep is a Debian thing, not a Linux thing in general.

} BTW, why is it that an edit of 'config.modules' is always quietly 
} overwritten by the installer?

It's not overwritten by "the installer".  It has a dependency on the
files generated by the "configure" script, so it will only be remade
if configure has been re-run.  Normally this happens during the
execution of configure itself, so any edits to config.modules that
you do will cause config.modules to be newer than its dependencies,
and it will not be rebuilt.

If configure is running, the assumption is that preconditions for the
build have changed, so config.modules is regenerated from the defaults
in Src/**/*.mdd files.  This is also how new modules are picked up.

You aren't supposed to need to run "configure" more than once on the
same build tree unless something about the preconditions is changing.
If you are routinely re-running configure when none of the templates
from which it is built (e.g. configure.ac) has changed, you're doing
more work than necessary.

Anyway, if you actually read either the INSTALL file or the comments
in config.modules itself:

# Values of `auto' are `yes' or `no'. configure sets the value to
# `yes'.  If you set it by hand to `no', the line will be retained
# when the file is regenerated in future.

I should have remembered that.  I've forgotten why I stopped using it
and went with a local copy ... probably because for quite a while I
was switching back and forth between static and dynamic linking on
a regular basis and needed two copies of the file to do so.