Re: [PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure variable [and 1 more messages]

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 31.07.2020 15:02, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jan Beulich writes ("Re: [PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure 
> variable"):
>> On 29.06.2020 14:05, Ian Jackson wrote:
>>> Jan Beulich writes ("Re: [PATCH] tools/configure: drop BASH configure 
>>> variable"):
>>>> On 26.06.2020 19:00, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>>>> ... this may or may not take effect on the file system the sources
>>>> are stored on.
>>>
>>> In what circumstances might this not take effect ?
>>
>> When the file system is incapable of recording execute permissions?
>> It has been a common workaround for this in various projects that
>> I've worked with to use $(SHELL) to account for that, so the actual
>> permissions from the fs don't matter. (There may be mount options
>> to make everything executable on such file systems, but people may
>> be hesitant to use them.)
> 
> I don't think we support building from sources which have been
> unpacked onto such filesystems.  Other projects which might actually
> need to build on Windows or something do do this $(SHELL) thing or an
> equivalent, but I don't think that's us.

It's not unexpected that you think of Windows here, but my thoughts
were more towards building from sources on a CD or DVD, where iirc
execute permissions also don't exist. The latest when we have
out-of-tree builds fully working, this ought to be something that
people should be able to do, imo. (Even without out-of-tree builds,
my "next best" alternative of using a tree of symlinks to build in
would similarly have an issue with the links pointing at a mounted
CD/DVD, if the $(SHELL) wasn't present.)

Jan