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

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2021 16:04:48 +0200

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

> Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason  <[email-masked]> 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.