Re: "make distclean" does not bring back build tree to previous state

[Gavin Smith]

On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 08:21:29PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> >         modified:   tp/Texinfo/XS/TestXS.c
> 
> This file was modified.  It is probably because xsubpp ran to regenerate
> TestXS.c.
> 
> This issue was previously reported:
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2021-02/msg00160.html
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2021-03/msg00030.html
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-texinfo/2021-08/msg00021.html
> 
> - but I did not want to make any changes at that time, due to how
> fragile the XS build code was and the risk of breaking something.
> 
> Obviously clobbering the pristine TestXS.c with no way to get back the
> original version (different because of varying output for different
> versions of xsubpp) is not acceptable.
> 
> I am going to make a change not to distribute TestXS.c, so that xsubpp
> will always be required for building XS modules.

I've made this change.  Arguably it was not necessary, as the same issue
occurs with distributed Info files, which could be overwritten.  However,
it's potentially less of a distraction this way, as distributing a
generated file is the exceptional case.

We will have to wait and see if not distributing the *.c files causes
any build issues for users without a working xsubpp.