Hello Bob, On Sat, Mar 17, 2007 at 10:44:42AM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote: > First off let me say that I was perfectly aware of the standards for > make maintainer-clean when I posted my response to that message. > There is no standard target to perform the desired operation. That > poster had a very particular set of needs. My suggestion there did > not in any way reflect a "standard" use of automake or use of the gnu > standards. It was a very targeted (ab)use of the tool. I knew that.
I'm sorry that I accused you and Ralf that you misinterpret the target; I was wrong in both cases. In the course of the preceding year or two, whenever I heard about mainatiner-clean, it was misinterpreted this way. (That's why I reacted so hysterically when I saw your hint on the automake list.) I cannot agree that the need is "very particular". Virtually every projects' CVS build instructions start with point 1. "get a clean checkout". And if the build does not work, the user wants to get back to that clean checkout. I was afraid that if we let the rumour spread, this will soon become the de-facto standard for half of the projects, and the name "maintainer-clean" will no longer have any meaning. So I wanted to see how do the standard makers feel about it. > It would be good to have some improved functionality in this area. > See also my posting asking for a clean target for generated source > files. [All it needs is someone to actually do the work. :-)] > > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2007-03/msg00001.html OK, so if want to do something about this, I should first implement --clean, and then start recommending it as the right tool for the purpose. Finally, a minor clarification: > > If `make maintainer-clean', then the GNU Standards should be changed > > to reflect this. The obvious disadvantage is that if the > > bootstrap&&configure does not finish, maintainer-clean is not usable. > > If configure does not finish then no Makefile based target is usable. > Which may have been your point. But I think it is safe to assume a > working system and in an working system configure will finish and > Makefile targets will be available. It is common that a configure script ends with an error message that ``package foo is needed to build this project''. (Yes, these configure scripts are badly written, as the AC_MSG_ERROR is meant to notify about ``an error that prevents `configure' from completing,'' as the manual says. Yet is is often used in situations which prevent the build from completing.) So, in practice, one has to collect all of the pre-requisites of the projects, before a working Makefile is available. Thanks, Stepan Kasal ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Autogen-users mailing list Autogen-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/autogen-users
