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

[Ralf Corsepius]

Am Don, 2002-04-04 um 18.44 schrieb Akim Demaille:
> 
> Let me wrap the question in the other direction: what is better with
> providing a list of files to remove?  How does your solution work when
> there is no longer the top Makefile, for whatever reason, but there
> remains other files?
> 
> Using ./configure --clean, you never face this problem.
Hmm, IMHO you are missing an essential point against
configure/config.status --clean: 

Centralization vs. decentralization -- While it's pretty easy to produce
non-functional config.status or configure scripts during development
with autoconf/automake, decentralized Makefiles remain functionally
enough for a "make distclean".

On the other hand, a file list is not enough if wanting to clean
directories (eg. autom4te.cache). Not even automake currently can handle
that, because it presumes _files_.

Ralf