At 08:58 AM 2/16/01 -0600, Sam TH wrote:
>One question:  what does make tidy do?  I've never used it.

Ah, the light dawns.  Now I understand why people want autoconf -- they 
clean thoroughly when all they need is to tidy up a bit!  :-)  :-)

This a lightweight variant of 'make clean' that just removes the objects 
associated with an arbitrary subtree:

  http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/99/May/0165.html

For example, say you update an internal piecetable API and want to rebuild 
just that library:

  cd abi/src/text/fmt/ptbl
  make tidy
  make

Or say you just want to refresh the entire UI:

  cd abi/src/wp
  make tidy
  make

>Furthermore, there isn't a top-level make tidy available.

Since the tidy target dives, you can invoke it anywhere at or below the 
following node of the tree:

  abi/src

The reason there's not an explicit toplevel target (ie, in abi/Makefile) is 
because using tidy to clean the entire tree would be criminally stupid when 
'make clean' does the whole job *so* much faster.  

And the *last* thing I want to do is encourage criminal stupidity.  :-)

Paul

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