Re: RFC: ./configure or ./config.status --clean

[Peter Eisentraut]

Eric Siegerman writes:

> Another possibility is to do the cleaning in the Makefile as it's
> always been done, but have config.status provide the list of
> files.  Something like an "@configure_targets@" macro for
> config.status to replace

That would have been my first thought, but you don't really need to supply
*all* files that config.status creates, because using tracing facilities
you can easily find out about most of those yourself.  The only thing you
need to list are the undeclared files that configure or config.status may
leave behind, such as config.cache, config.log, or various temp files.

> -- the catch being that, unlike other
> macros, this one's value is customized per directory.  So every
> Makefile.in (Automake-generated or otherwise), can just say:
>       distclean-whatever:
>               ....
>               -rm -f @configure_targets@
>
> This accomplishes the goal of removing knowledge of Autoconf from
> inside Automake, while sidestepping all these other decisions :-)

Au contraire, this moves a lot of knowledge about Automake into Autoconf,
because it assumes that you have exactly one config.status-generated
makefile per directory.

For instance, I often make my packages have only one
config.status-generated makefile that is included by all "real" makefiles.
Your scheme would fall down here.

> > If "rm Makefile" is the the last thing that "make distclean" does,
>
> i.e. autoconf guarantees that Makefile be the last file listed
> in @configure_targets@, and Automake put that macro at the end
> of distclean-local or whatever it's called,

This assumes that you use autoconf with 'make' and certain things about
how makefiles operate.  Don't go there.  Just list the files and let the
makefile writer worry about how to use that.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   address@hidden