Greg Hudson via RT wrote:
> By the standards of most modern software packages, the entirety of krb5
> builds in very little time and takes very little space.  Moreover, most
> people do not build krb5 themselves; they get it from an OS
> distribution.  
As I do, using Gentoo.

> OS packages typically build all of krb5 and then split up
> the result into multiple binary packages, so they do not need build
> system support to separate clients, libraries, and so forth.
Many popular packages' build systems support conditional
compilation/installation of portions of the software.

Also, distributions somewhat rely on a program's build system to build
the software. For example, Debian (I'm guessing), Gentoo, and LFS depend
on your build system to produce the binaries andto install binaries
where they belong. MIT's krb5 ironically recognizes this by providing an
install target in its Makefiles.

The distribution's task of making certain features of your package
optional is somewhat dependent on your buildsystem's support for such.
If every single distribution which packages mit-krb5 has to generate and
maintain its own patches to the mit-krb5 buildsystem to have conditional
building support, effort is wasted. Also, if your buildsystem builds
programs which the distribution isn't installed, the user has to wait
for those portions to be built. Thus, I think the proper place to
implement conditional building and installation is within your buildsystem.

A related task would be supporting installation of the system-utility
replacement binaries, but that doesn't bother me as greatly as the
inability to have even general control over what gets compiled when make
is run.

> 
> Do you have a particular need in this regard?  If this is just a matter
> of principle, I don't think we want to further complicate our build system.
I'm sorry, it is a matter of two principles.
1. It should be possible to decide what gets installed and compiled when
using compiling and installing mit-krb5.
2. Multiple distributions shouldn't duplicate effort in hacking your
buildsystem or otherwise breaking it apart.

If you are willing to consider this issue, I think I could put a patch
together. I haven't looked too closely at your current buildsystem. I'm
 now just trying to establish that this bug is valid ;-). I initially
wondering if this functionality just wasn't documented online, but you
have hinted that the functionality doesn't exist.

-- 
binki