Karl Berry <k...@freefriends.org> writes: > [snip automake manual blockquote] > > But nowadays, especially since autoreconf exists, it does not seem > unreasonable to me to want to delete Makefile.in, configure, etc. It > is just as easy to run autoreconf (or equivalent) as configure&&make, > and it feels nice to have such dependent files gone from the source > tree, especially when working on setting up a package with autotools. > > I certainly don't suggest changing any behavior, but perhaps the manual > could mention that it could be done via maintainer-clean-local or > MAINTAINERCLEANFILES, e.g.: > > MAINTAINERCLEANFILES = aclocal.m4 config.h.in configure \ > Makefile Makefile.in */Makefile */Makefile.in > > Some maintainers might prefer to also remove build-aux or more...
It is certainly valuable to test that you can bootstrap your package from autoreconf up, but I don't think `make maintainer-clean' is the best place to do that. The `git-clean' command removes untracked files from the worktree, and I'm sure other VCSes let you do similar things. Maybe the manual could point to those commands? -- Jack