[pacman-dev] $startdir in PKGBUILDs

[Dan McGee]

On Thursday, June 3, 2010, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Can anyone think of an actual use of $startdir in PKGBUILDs?

It is used in VCS builds on occasion as the location of the dowloaded
repo so that buildin clean (wiping out src/) doesn't force you to
re-clone or whatever.

>
> A change I am planning post 3.4 is to completely break $startdir/pkg == $pkgdir for single packages.  I want all packaging to occur in $startdir/pkg/$pkgname as is currently done in split packages as this will make it a lot easier to split of debug symbols into a separate package.  We have discouraged the use of $startdir for at least a couple of releases now, so people should be prepared...  [1]
>
> So I would like to remove mention of $startdir from the PKGBUILD man page.
>
> Can anybody see a reason for keeping it?
>
> Allan
>
>
> [1] well, even some of the pacman devs still use it in PKGBUILDs... *cough* libarchive *cough*  ;)

Hey now! You could fix it too! :)

And by the way Allan, it was definitely me that broke [extra] today, whoops.