Re: Building PostgreSQL in external directory is broken?

Hi Alexander,

> Assuming postgres sources located in postgresql directory, the
> following sequence of commands
>
> mkdir -p pgbld
> cd pgbld
> ../postgresql/configure --disable-debug --disable-cassert --enable-tap-tests
> make -j4
>
> ...
>
> It seems strange to me that I'm the first one discovering this. Am I
> missing something?

To be honest, this is the first time I see anyone trying to build a
project that is using Autotools from an external directory :) I
checked the documentation [1] and it doesn't seem that we claim to
support this.

Also I tried your patch on MacOS Monterey 12.4 and it didn't work. I
get the following error:

```
...
ar: cryptohash.o: No such file or directory
ar: hmac.o: No such file or directory
ar: sha1.o: No such file or directory
ar: sha2.o: No such file or directory
```

... with or without the patch.

My guess would be that the reason no one discovered this before is
that this is in fact not supported and/or tested on CI.

Could you give an example of when this can be useful?

[1]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/install-short.html

--
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev