[Gnu-arch-users] What's the rationale behind the cmd-build-config.c restrictions?

[Rob Browning]

In cmd-build-config.c we have:

    if (!arch_valid_config_name (config))
      {
        safe_printfmt (2, "%s: invalid config name (%s)\n",
                       argv[0], config);
        exit (2);
      }

    tree_root = arch_tree_root (0, dir, 0);

    if (!tree_root)
      {
        safe_printfmt (2, "%s: not in project tree (%s)\n",
                       argv[0], dir);
        exit (1);
      }

What's the rationale behind these restrictions?  i.e. why isn't
something like this OK:

  rm -rf foo && mkdir foo
  cd foo
  tla build-config /home/blarg/bar/bar-1.2.5

or

  tla build-config ../../blarg/bar/bar-1.2.5

For certain purposes, these operations would be quite helpful, so I
wanted to understand why they're explicitly disallowed.

Thanks
-- 
Rob Browning
rlb @defaultvalue.org and @debian.org; previously @cs.utexas.edu
GPG starting 2002-11-03 = 14DD 432F AE39 534D B592  F9A0 25C8 D377 8C7E 73A4