r19990 - gnucash/trunk/util - Add facility to force BUILDING_FROM_SVN=no from outside the Gnucash build system

[Micha Lenk]

Hi Derek,

sorry for not explaining my problem/commit more verbosely in advance.

Am 29.12.2010 15:34, schrieb Derek Atkins:
> Can you explain how this diff is useful?  The "Building_from_svn" check
> is all about determining whether we have to e.g. build the swig files,
> etc.  It's COMPLETELY dependent on having already called "make dist".

Correct. The commit is useful for me as a package maintainer in Debian.
I started recently to use Git for maintaining the Debian package sources
for Gnucash (with almost only packaging stuff added). These sources are
based on the official Gnucash tarballs and are publically available on [1].

 1. http://git.debian.org/?p=pkg-gnucash/gnucash.git

With this setup the used source code is obviously maintained in a Git
repository, which gnc-svnversion detects correctly. However, only the
files that are distributed in the official tarballs are available in the
used Git repository. But when gnc-svnversion detects a Git/Svn/Svk
repository, the Gnucash build system tries to build stuff from sources
that are not shipped in the official tarballs, and which are hence
unavailable. An example is the build failure that I've reported some
days ago in [2]IRC.

 2. http://lists.gnucash.org/logs/2010/12/2010-12-27.html

With the commited hack the wrapping Debian package build system can now
set the environment variable BUILDING_FROM_SVN=no so that the build
doesn't fail just because I manage the unpackaged tarballs in a Git
repository.

> If you force it off, then the build will probably fail.  Have you tested
> that this actually works?

With this hack enabled I can successfully build packages from the
packaging Git repostory. Without this hack it fails to build.

I hope you agree with this commit. Otherwise I am happy to accept any
alternative solution to my problem.

Regards,
Micha