Re: A more radical cleanup for make bootstrap?

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Gregory.

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 19:46:55 +0000, Gregory Heytings wrote:

> [Subject changed so that potentially interested readers do not miss it.]

Thanks!

> >> WDYT of simply adding another "full-bootstrap" target, with the meaning 
> >> "from the lowest possible ground"?

> > If other people are so married to the "bootstrap" name that they refuse 
> > to consider renaming it, I don't think it's worth spending more time 
> > arguing about.  So, sure.


> Now Stefan M and Po Lu both said (IIUC) that what they'd like is a 
> bootstrap that does a less radical cleanup than what bootstrap now does. 
> And (again IIUC) Eli and you (and others) agree that bootstrap should 
> start with a state that is as clean as possible (which is what extraclean 
> does).

The prime quality of the current bootstrap is that it doesn't delete
anything unrecoverable - it only deletes generated files.

> So what I'd suggest is to use extraclean in bootstrap, and add either 
> another target like "soft-bootstrap" or a configuration variable like 
> "SOFT=true" that would make a less radical cleanup than what 
> bootstrap-cleanup now does.

It's not clear from the comments what extraclean does.  The comments
just say it does "delete backup and autosave files, too", without
specifying the files whose backup and autosave files get deleted.

> Would that be a solution that is acceptable to everyone?

If I understand correctly, the proposed bootstrap would irrevocably
delete unrecoverable files.  I don't think this should be done as a side
effect of something else, rather users who want extraclean should have
to say so explicitly, as a safety measure.

Again, if I understand correctly, I would type make bootstrap out of
sheer finger memory and lose lots of files.  I'd be unhappy about that.

Why not, instead, leave bootstrap as it is (possibly removing the call
to ./configure from it) and give the new target a new name, such as
bootstrap-hard?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).