Gary V. Vaughan wrote: > Hi Jim, > > On 22 Oct 2011, at 03:06, Jim Meyering wrote: >> Gary V. Vaughan wrote: >>> As it stands (without this patch), README-release recommends: >>> >>> git checkout master >>> git pull >>> ./configure >>> make maintainer-clean >>> ./bootstrap >>> >>> Running the (potentially) outdated configure, to build a (potentially) >>> outdated Makefile, which may very well rerun aclocal, automake, autoconf >>> etc just to call the maintainer-clean rule, and then blow it all away >>> in the next step with a bootstrap seems odd and torturous to me. >> >> The above may be a little wasteful. But it is reliable and turn-key. > > No it isn't. Imagine that the bootstrap process has changed upstream, > and that, for example, additional bootstrap steps are needed to fix a > bug in maintainer-clean. The README-release mandated procedure tells > you to run the old maintainer-clean rule after potentially merging with > a new tree that has different requirements. And you don't even rerun > bootstrap first to ensure that you get a Makefile with a matching > maintainer-clean rule. > > It's very easy to think of a multitude of scenarios where it's not only > suboptimal but flat out wrong to recommend a full autoreconf run, and
Omitting the "make maintainerclean" step can result in putting stale generated files in a distribution tarball. Running things in the wrong order wastes time, but I see no other ill effect. E.g., if you remove a gnulib module like parse-datetime, with rules that run $(YACC). Then, the post-pull bootstrap'd Makefiles will lack the rule to remove the generated .c file. People rarely remove modules like that, and even when they do, leaving around a stray non-distributed file wouldn't hurt anyone. Of course, it's better not to do that, but unlike omitting "make maintainerclean" altogether, having a stray .c file in your build directory would not have an impact on the distributed tarball. > a second additional configure run just to bring the tree back into a > semi consistent state that will even allow you to run maintainer-clean > at all. > > If you want to clean the cruft out of your working directories before > starting the release process, you should do it before you change branches > and merge changes from upstream, using the Makefile that you already have > that is already in sync with the rest of your tree: > > make maintainer-clean > git checkout master > git pull origin master > ./bootstrap > ./configure Yes, running "make maintainer-clean" is a requirement. A patch with that improvement would be welcome.
