Option to not rebuid existing binaries

[andreipoe]

Hi @zimbatm.

I think it would be a welcome addition to have an option to avoid rebuilding existing files. For example, if a build stops before it was partially done, we could avoid recompiling everything by having tar not replace existing files and only run ./configure again if it didn't complete successfully. I've been experimenting with this and it seems to work fine.

The way I see it, there are two ways to implement this: we could make what I described above the default behaviour and provide a full rebuild option (similar to make -B), or the other way around, where the user could request to not rebuild existing binaries. Personally, I would go for the first option because it seems to waste less time, but I was wondering if you have any preference with that.

Thanks,

Andrei

[zimbatm]

Hey @andreipoe,

the first option sounds good to me :)

[andreipoe]

I think this is good enough. It avoids re-configuring, and since the file timestamps aren't changed, then make will not rebuild unless specifically required as part of the script. I wanted to pass on -B to make when the user runs ./build.sh -B, but that seems to be very hit-or-miss with autotools, to let's just leave it as it is now. Users can always delete bin, build and target manually to force a clean build.