Are you referring to the make targets in automake? I think it is called "distclean" because it is related to "dist". 'make clean' only removes files made by 'make' or 'make all'. 'make distclean' will also remove all the files made by ./configure. So in a way, it's preparing the directories for distribution. When you 'make dist', you don't want to package up files ./configure made. It's common before making a release to do something like:
make distcheck make distclean make dist I haven't used automake in a year or so though, so my memory may be fuzzy. On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 11:15 AM, AJ ONeal <[email protected]> wrote: > I know what it does, I just don't get what the "dist" prefix means. > > -- > AJ ONeal > (317) 426-6525 > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
