VPATH Installations

It is possible to build the OS project in a directory that is different from the directory where the source code is present. This is called a VPATH compiliation. A VPATH compilation is very useful if you wish to build several versions (e.g. debug and non-debug versions, or versions with availability of various combinations of third-party software) of the OS project from a single copy the source code.

For example, assume you wish to build a debug version of the OS project in the directory vpath-debug and that ../COIN-OS is the path to the root of the OS project distribution. From the vpath-debug directory, run configure as follows:

../COIN-OS/configure --enable-debug

After you run configure, the OS project directory structure will be present in the vpath-debug directory along with all of the necessary Makefiles. Next from the vpath-debug directory execute

make

and all of the libraries created will be in their respective directories inside vpath-debug and not ../COIN-OS.

Note: If you have already run the configure script inside the ../COIN-OS directory, you cannot do a VPATH build until you have run

make distclean

in the ../COIN-OS directory.