RE: autoreconf --clean

[David Byron]

On Wednesday, March 14, 2007 @ 9:33p, Bob Proulx wrote:

> The 'make maintainer-clean' automake generated target will almost do
> what you want.  You could add the additional files to the variable
> MAINTAINERCLEANFILES and then everything would be cleaned up.

Right, but then I need a Makefile (which I might not have if I've run
autoreconf -fvi, but haven't configured anywhere), and I need to add some
special logic to the Makefile which I bet duplicates info that autoreconf
already knows, and gets complicated if I add things like

AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR(build-aux)

to my configure.ac

> > Is there another way to make files/directories like:
> > 
> > aclocal.m4
> > autom4te.cache
> > config.guess
> > config.h.in
> > config.sub
> > configure
> > depcomp
> > install-sh
> > missing
> > and all the Makefile.in's generated from Makefile.am's
> > 
> > disappear?
> 
> Usually I would 'rm -rf' the source directory and they would all
> disappear.
> 
> What use model are you envisioning?

It's helpful when preparing to check things in to revision control to remove
_all_ generated files.  rm -rf does this, but is a little more brutal than I
have in mind.

> > I'm also have in my head that it's OK to have the source
> > directory on a read-only file system but then these
> > files would have to go somewhere else.  This isn't my
> > goal, but perhaps they're related?
>
> What you are asking about is essentially a "VPATH build".
> You will need GNU make to effectively use this feature.

I assumed this, yes.  Sorry I didn't make this clear.

> In summary the process is like this:
>
> Given a source directory project-X.Y build in a different
> directory.  Frequently beside it but could actually be
> quite far away.
> 
>   chmod -R a-w project  # Just to show that it can be read-only
> 
>   mkdir debug-build
>   cd debug-build
>   ../project/configure CFLAGS=-g
>   make
> 
>   cd ..
>   mkdir opt-build
>   cd opt-build
>   ../project/configure CFLAGS=-O
>   make
> 
>   cd ..
>   rm -rf debug-build opt-build

This makes sense but what if we assume that we're starting with configure.ac
and Makefile.am instead of a configure script and Makefile.in?  At this
point the source directory can no longer be read only, correct?

-DB