running from build dir

Chris Shoemaker c.shoemaker at cox.net
Tue Dec 21 18:56:54 EST 2004


I found that some instructions in HACKING for running gnucash from the
build dir didn't quite work.  Since ./src/bin/overrides/gnucash*
expect that $PATH is already setup, they do stuff like 'exec
gnucash-env ...'.  But, ./src/bin/overrides/ (where gnucash-build-env
lives) is not in $PATH, so one solution is to specific the relative
path from the build root.  That seems to be how e.g. gnucash-valgrind
works.  OTOH, this seems kind of limiting, since CWD must now always
be the build root dir.

I'm still grokking all the startup scripts, but here's my initial
impression: There are two conflicting designs here.  One, you want to
"magically" find the right executables, even if the path isn't set
correctly, hence generate-gnc-script forces all the paths and wraps
every executable.  But two, it would be nice to run from the build dir
-- IOW, to do precisely what # one is trying to prevent.  :(

Would these two interests be compatible if the implementation were
different? or is it better to just 'make install' after every compile?

Perhaps the forcing of full pathnames can be delayed until 'make
install'.  That way the scripts that live in the build dir could also
run in the build dir.

-chris
-------------- next part --------------
Index: HACKING
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/cvsroot/gnucash/HACKING,v
retrieving revision 1.5.4.2
diff -u -r1.5.4.2 HACKING
--- HACKING	3 May 2004 06:17:01 -0000	1.5.4.2
+++ HACKING	22 Dec 2004 03:11:32 -0000
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@
 
 To run gnucash from your build tree:
 -- edit ./src/bin/overrides/gnucash and replace gnucash-env with
-   gnucash-build-env
+   ./src/bin/overrides/gnucash-build-env
 -- then start gnucash by saying ./src/bin/overrides/gnucash
 -- Make sure you undo this change before installing gnucash
 


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