Why is there both a `compile` and a `build` commands in V2 CLI?

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So I noticed the tectonic -X new command creates the src/ & build/default/ directory structure etc. What is the advantage of this structure, along with tectonic -X build vs using the plain structure and tectonic -X compile?

Is there any plan for making tectonic -X build compile only a selection from index.tex of say a large book? I imagine that people writing heavy documents could benefit from such a feature - tectonic would concatenate the _preamble.tex and _postamble.tex to say a chapter of a book and compile only it to save time.

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Is there any plan for making tectonic -X build compile only a selection from index.tex of say a large book?

There are many compiler-independent solutions for this, for example the subfiles package, so I don’t necessarily see a reason to implement this in Tectonic, but of course you could implement it if you want.

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Hadn’t known this one, thanks for the pointer! Indeed it makes me even more curios regarding the design of the V2 CLI.