[buckminster-dev] Action output?

[Thomas Hallgren <thomas@xxxxxxx>]

A component consists of various artifacts. Some will be present in the component when it 
materializes and others can be built by actions defined in the component cspec. The former 
will of course always be relative to the component root but that's a limitation that would 
be too limiting for action output since our actions are very generic. Their product might be 
a deployment of some kind. It doesn't feel right if that deployment must be contained within 
the component from where it is created.

It might be desirable to sometimes provide some kind of generic output root directory to the 
build process and then let the Action output be relative to that rather then to the 
component root. The root that I have in mind is local to the site where the build executes 
so there's no way it can be declared in the cspec.

Let's for instance assume that you want your build to automatically end up in a structure 
that is a valid update site. A build.feature action could then assume that it's output 
should be put in <output root>/features and a build.plugin action would use the 
corresponding <output root>/plugins.

Question is, where do we set this <output root>? Should it be set once for the whole 
workspace? Or perhaps a default for the workspace and then have an option to override for 
each action? Should we then override just when actions are invoked or should the override be 
made persistent (an action <-> output root map) so that transitive invocations can be mapped 
on the fly?

Kind Regards,
Thomas Hallgren