When I run "make maintainer-clean", there is a difference depending on whether it is an out-of-source build.
In an in-source build, several files are deleted. After running "./configure ; make maintainer-clean", the output of "git status" includes: deleted: doc/html_default_commands_args.texi deleted: doc/pod2texi.texi deleted: man/pod2texi.1 deleted: po_document/texinfo_document.pot deleted: tp/Texinfo/XS/gnulib/lib/unicase/special-casing-table.h deleted: tp/Texinfo/XS/gnulib/lib/uninorm/composition-table.h deleted: tp/Texinfo/XS/main/command_ids.h deleted: tp/Texinfo/XS/main/element_types.c deleted: tp/Texinfo/XS/main/element_types.h There may be other files that are also deleted that are not tracked in git. However, they are not deleted in an out-of-source build. After "mkdir build ; cd build ; ../configure ; make maintainer-clean", the output of "git status" only reports the following deleted file: deleted: po_document/texinfo_document.pot Indeed, po_document/Makefile.in.in has the following rule: maintainer-clean: distclean @echo "This command is intended for maintainers to use;" @echo "it deletes files that may require special tools to rebuild." rm -f $(srcdir)/$(DOMAIN).pot $(srcdir)/stamp-po $(GMOFILES) - which deletes the .pot file in srcdir. But srcdir is not used for the other files. It is not even used for the gnulib files, which were imported from outwith Texinfo. gnulib/lib/Makefile.am includes the following line from the gnulib module "unicase/special-casing": MAINTAINERCLEANFILES += unicase/special-casing-table.h It does not say MAINTAINERCLEANFILES += $(srcdir)/unicase/special-casing-table.h It may not be that important of an issue as "make maintainer-clean" may not be much used, but it seems to me that files referred to in MAINTAINERCLEANFILES would always be in the srcdir, and hence it is burdensome always to precede listed files with "$(srcdir)/". I wonder if this should perhaps be reported to the Automake developers. Does anybody have any ideas?