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

[Peter Eisentraut]

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.

2. AC_SUBST(ac_extra_clean_files, [configure.lineno autom4te.cache])

   To be added to DISTCLEANFILES in automake-generated makefiles.

3. {configure,config.status} --print-extra-clean-files

   Not very pretty, but you get the idea.

The advantages of all of these solutions is that they are simple to
implement for both Autoconf and Automake, they don't gratuitiously change
current makefile-writing practice, and they don't move makefile jobs into
autoconf.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   address@hidden