Re: maintainer mode

[Roger Leigh]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:

> Warning: I'm going to give the "AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is pure evil
> on a stick" point of view.  I know some people find it useful
> (although I don't know when).

I'm sure the reasons you gave are valid (and I was not aware of some
of the downsides you mentioned), but I thought I would demonstrate a
valid use for it.

In the gimp-print source tree, there are a number of files which we
ship in the distributed tarball pre-built.  These are PDF and HTML
versions of SGML manuals and PostScript versions of Texinfo manuals.
We do not want an end-user to have to have these tools installed.  The
SGML tools are notoriously fragile (they are currently partly broken
on my system!), and not all systems will have a teTeX installation.

Maintainer mode is used to modify what is cleaned.  If maint-mode is
not enabled, then the pre-built files will never be cleaned.  If it is
used, by users who explicitly enable it, then they will be removed.
Doing this allows us to require only developers to have a greater set
of tools to be installed and configured, without passing on the burden
to our users.

Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh
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