Common makefile (gasp) stuff

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 1/13/15 8:29 PM, Paul O'Neil wrote:
> On 01/13/2015 09:35 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> <snip>
>>> 1) These interdependencies are currently expressed by hard-coded
>>> filesystem paths, which presumes a specific directory layout for
>>> checking out dmd, dlang.org, phobos, druntime. This means the build will
>>> break if somebody doesn't know the correct directory structure to use
>>> when checking out these repos.
>>
>> Yah, that should be in a wiki. I keep on thinking about producing a
>> 10-minutes video "Your First Contribution to D" in which I explain step
>> by step how to get a pull request in starting from a scratch.
>>
>> We also have tools/update.sh which should probably be more prominently
>> advertised.
>>
> <snip>
>
> This shouldn't go (only) in the wiki.  It should be in the README of
> every repository.  And if not in the README, then the CONTRIBUTING file.
>   A minimal list of "clone these things, run make in these directories"
> is fine here with a reference to the wiki for more details.
>
> I put off some documentation updates a few months ago because it wasn't
> worth the investment yet to figure out how to build the website.  The
> wiki pages appeared to be about building the compiler, which I didn't
> realize I should be interested in.  This barrier is too high.

Great ideas! I created https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13980 to 
track them. Thanks, Andrei