Re: Question about distcleancheck behaviour

[Gaetan Nadon]

On Mon, 2009-10-05 at 21:53 +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:

> Hello Gaetan,
> 
> * Gaetan Nadon wrote on Fri, Oct 02, 2009 at 08:30:51PM CEST:
> > 
> > Our components use "foreign" and "dist-bzip2" options. We distribute the
> > tarballs. When running distclean, the tarballs are not removed from the
> > build tree. This is not a problem for us. I was wondering if this is a
> > conscious design decision or an omission. 
> 
> Conscious design decision.  The developer should be able to build her
> distribution using 'make distcheck' and then just upload the resulting
> tarball.  (Think of 'make distcheck' as a better 'make dist'.)
> 
> > The reason for asking is the behaviour of distcleancheck. When I build
> > (using a VPATH build), the tarballs are not removed and it issues an
> > error about files being left in the distdir. If it was a design
> > decision, then there should be no errors. If it was an omission, then it
> > should be fixed.
> 
> There should be no errors from distcheck about them; the distcheck rule
> removes $(DIST_ARCHIVES) before invoking the distcleancheck rule.
> 
> > The behaviour of distcheck tends to confirm it is  an omission.
> 
> No, it confirms that it is intentional.  Do you invoke the
> distcleancheck rule yourself, manually?  Why, and in what situation?
> 

No I don't. I was investigating a workaround regarding some of our
unremoved generated files. I discovered the VPATH build and those
various clean targets. 

Thank you very much for responding.


> Thanks,
> Ralf
> 
>