[opensource-dev] Is 'STANDALONE' confusing?

[Oz Linden (Scott Lawrence)]

On 2011-02-21 9:38, Boroondas Gupte wrote:
> On 02/21/2011 03:28 PM, Oz Linden (Scott Lawrence) wrote:
>> >  If we are going to change it, the replacement term should, in addition
>> >  to being more accurately descriptive of what it does, be an affirmative
>> >  term - don't suggest any 'NO_*" replacements.
> Would it be acceptable to invert the setting's semantic in order to
> avoid a negation? I.e., STANDALONE=OFF would become NEW_SETTING=ON and
> vice versa. That'd allow for easy-to-understand names like
> USE_PREBUILD_LIBS or DOWNLOAD_NEEDED_DEPENDENCIES.
>
> Off course, the default value should be inverted together with the
> setting's semantic, such that the default behavior does not change.

Yes, I think that's best (assuming that we're going to change anything).

A couple of comments on the interesting discussion....

I'm not sure that any variation on 'USE_PREBUILD' quite captures the 
correct semantics, because in the new autobuild framework one way to 
work is going to be to download the project for a library you want to 
compile locally (perhaps to try a new version, or to make some patch) 
and then modify your viewer builds to use the output of that 
compilation.  When you do that, you'll still be using exactly the same 
sort of prebuilt package that you would, in the default case, download 
from LL.

The real distinction, I think, is whether or not you are using 
_installed_ libraries.  Normally, the viewer build has only minimal 
reliance on the libs that are installed on the system itself - it puts 
the packaged libraries (which are now by default all loaded in a 
'build-*/packages directory rather than being mixed in with the sources).

That might suggest something like USE_PACKAGED_LIBS with a default value 
of NO/FALSE.