Compiling from source (was Re: [78061] trunk/dports/devel/premake/Portfile)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 21, 2011, at 19:16, Blair Zajac wrote:

> On Apr 21, 2011, at 5:09 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> On Apr 21, 2011, at 19:08, Blair Zajac wrote:
>> 
>>> On Apr 21, 2011, at 5:06 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>> 
>>>> You also switched from downloading the source and building it, to downloading and installing a binary. Why this change? MacPorts is a build-from-source package manager, deviating only when source is not available or cannot be easily compiled.
>>> 
>>> I agree in general, but for Java packages, I don't see the point in compiling from source, unless we're applying patches.
>> 
>> I didn't realize this was a Java package.
> 
> I'm not saying it is, and I don't think it is (haven't checked), I was addressing the point about building from source.

I do agree that rebuilding Java software often doesn't help anything. Since Java code is compiled to an architecture-independent bytecode, there's no benefit to recompiling it.

premake, however, seems to be normal compiled Mac OS X software, which should please be compiled for the architecture(s) the user requests.