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

[Akim Demaille]

| Akim Demaille writes:
| > What I'm doing now is buying my freedom.  The freedom to extend
| > Autoconf without 1. requiring from the rest of the world that they
| > adjust their distclean rules, 2. requiring that Automake folks release
| > a newer Automake etc., not to mention that it needs 1. writing
| > documentation, 2. telling the people to read it.
| 
| All of these are good goals, but there are at least three other ways to
| achieve them:
| 
| 1. _AC_EXTRA_CLEAN_FILES([configure.lineno autom4te.cache])
| 
|    To be traced by automake.

So you are throwing away the non Automake users, and you lose the
ability to run ./configure --clean without Makefile (precisely after a
distclean).

| 2. AC_SUBST(ac_extra_clean_files, [configure.lineno autom4te.cache])
| 
|    To be added to DISTCLEANFILES in automake-generated makefiles.

The two are completely different, and I certainly don't want configure
to remove autom4te.cache, as it's a maintainerclean file.

| 3. {configure,config.status} --print-extra-clean-files
| 
|    Not very pretty, but you get the idea.

Guess what...

| ~/src/bison-1.29 % ./config.status --help
| `config.status' instantiates files from templates according to the
| current configuration.
| 
| Usage: ./config.status [OPTIONS] [FILE]...
| 
|   -h, --help       print this help, then exit
|   -V, --version    print version number, then exit
|   -d, --debug      don't remove temporary files
|       --recheck    update config.status by reconfiguring in the same 
conditions
|   --file=FILE[:TEMPLATE]
|                    instantiate the configuration file FILE
|   --header=FILE[:TEMPLATE]
|                    instantiate the configuration header FILE
| 
| Configuration files:
|  tests/bison tests/Makefile tests/atlocal Makefile config/Makefile 
intl/Makefile po/Makefile.in lib/Makefile src/Makefile doc/Makefile m4/Makefile
| 
| Configuration headers:
|  config.h:config.hin
| 
| Configuration commands:
|  tests/atconfig depfiles default-1
| 
| Report bugs to <address@hidden>.