Hi Julian,

if I do make run/noux_vim it will _always_ rebuild vim, regardless of whether this is useful. Is there a way to avoid this?

you are right - this is a bit annoying. The simplest solution is to comment-out the following line in the 'noux_vim.run' script:

lappend build_components noux-pkg/vim

It is on a separate line for a reason. .-) If you want to execute the run script and also rebuild vim, simply do

make noux-pkg/vim run/noux_vim

This will first re-build vim and then execute the run script (with the commented-out line). But in the normal case (when working on the Noux or on the Noux libc plugin, not the vim source), you can leave out the 'noux-pkg/vim' part.

Just a note regarding the rationale behind the current situation: The alternative solution would have been to build the respective Noux package only when it does not exist yet and skip it otherwise. However, in this case, a rebuild would never occur except when deleting the package manually from the build directory. The middle ground might be to execute './configure' only once but 'make' each time when revisiting the package. But in this case, dependencies from libports libraries would not be handled correctly. For example, when the ncurses library changes, we would expect vim to be relinked but this does not happen.

I figured that missing dependencies is worse than rebuilding the whole package in the default case. When working on Noux, I always do the trick mentioned above. But in this case, skipping the rebuild is a conscious decision.

Another idea I had was to make the behavior of building noux packages configurable via a build SPEC. E.g., by specifying the value 'phony_noux_pkg' to the SPECS build variable, the current policy could be enabled. Otherwise, a no-rebuild policy could be in effect. But I haven't made my mind yet whether I like this idea or not. The best would be if 'noux.mk' always did the right thing. But how?

If you like, you can experiment with the different approaches. All the magic happens within 'ports/mk/noux.mk'.

Cheers Norman