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

[Akim Demaille]

| > So you are throwing away the non Automake users, and you lose the
| > ability to run ./configure --clean without Makefile (precisely after a
| > distclean).
| 
| Why can't you do this:
| 
| %% AC_CONFIG_DISTCLEANFILES(FILES)
| %% Clean FILES
| AC_DEFUN([AC_CONFIG_DISTCLEANFILES],
| [ac_distcleanfiles="$ac_distcleanfiles $1"
| AC_SUBST(ac_distcleanfiles)
| ])
| 
| You need to add support to automake to add ac_distcleanfiles to the
| distclean target, but after that any macro can register files to be
| cleaned.  You can also do the cleaning (optionally) in config.status,
| and in your own Makefile.ins--you won't be tied to automake.
| 
| An additional macro for ac_maintainercleanfiles would be nice.  A
| similar method could be used to tell automake what files to distribute,
| such as configure, configure.ac, config.h.in etc. that automake
| currently hard-codes.

Because I fail to see the advantage for Automake to have to clean
itself, rather than asking the cleaning.  That's better to my eyes,
also because a list of files might not always be the right thing to
do.  Keeping it under *program* control will make it work in all
cases.

And anyway, modularity mandates this design.