Separating build tree from the source tree

[Jan Stolarek]

Dear list,

I have a GHC source tree in ghc-working. I would like to have a separate build tree in ghc-build, 
so I did something like this:

mkdir ghc-build
cd ghc-build
lndir ../ghc-working

Now, I have two different machines. On openSUSE with git 1.8.0 I get something like this:

[killy at xerxes : /dane/uczelnia/projekty/ghc-build] ./configure
checking for gfind... no
checking for find... /usr/bin/find
checking for GHC version date... configure: WARNING: cannot determine snapshot version: no .git or 
_darcs directory and no VERSION file

Despite the warning configure succeeds. On Debian Squeeze with git 1.7.10 the same thing doesn't 
work:

[killy at GLaDOS : /dane/uczelnia/projekty/ghc-build] ./configure
checking for gfind... no
checking for find... /usr/bin/find
checking for GHC version date... fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent 
directories): .git
configure: error: failed to detect version date: check that git is in your path

Does anyone have a clue why this happens? There are probably some differences on these systems 
with the most obvious one being git version. On both systems however git doesn't recognize 
ghc-build as a valid git repository ('git status' failes), but on one of them this is only a 
warning while on another this is an error. Any advice will be appreciated.

Janek