GNU bug report logs - #32074
maintainer-clean and removing configure/Makefile.in/etc.

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From: Jack Kelly <jack <at> jackkelly.name>
To: Karl Berry <karl <at> freefriends.org>
Cc: 32074 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#32074: maintainer-clean and removing configure/Makefile.in/etc.
Date: Sat, 07 Jul 2018 10:28:15 +1000

Karl Berry <karl <at> freefriends.org> writes:

> [snip automake manual blockquote]
>
> But nowadays, especially since autoreconf exists, it does not seem
> unreasonable to me to want to delete Makefile.in, configure, etc. It
> is just as easy to run autoreconf (or equivalent) as configure&&make,
> and it feels nice to have such dependent files gone from the source
> tree, especially when working on setting up a package with autotools.
>
> I certainly don't suggest changing any behavior, but perhaps the manual
> could mention that it could be done via maintainer-clean-local or
> MAINTAINERCLEANFILES, e.g.:
>
> MAINTAINERCLEANFILES = aclocal.m4 config.h.in configure \
>                        Makefile Makefile.in */Makefile */Makefile.in
>
> Some maintainers might prefer to also remove build-aux or more...

It is certainly valuable to test that you can bootstrap your package
from autoreconf up, but I don't think `make maintainer-clean' is the
best place to do that. The `git-clean' command removes untracked files
from the worktree, and I'm sure other VCSes let you do similar
things. Maybe the manual could point to those commands?

-- Jack

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