Re: Question about distcleancheck behaviour

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Gaetan,

* Gaetan Nadon wrote on Fri, Oct 02, 2009 at 08:30:51PM CEST:
> 
> Our components use "foreign" and "dist-bzip2" options. We distribute the
> tarballs. When running distclean, the tarballs are not removed from the
> build tree. This is not a problem for us. I was wondering if this is a
> conscious design decision or an omission. 

Conscious design decision.  The developer should be able to build her
distribution using 'make distcheck' and then just upload the resulting
tarball.  (Think of 'make distcheck' as a better 'make dist'.)

> The reason for asking is the behaviour of distcleancheck. When I build
> (using a VPATH build), the tarballs are not removed and it issues an
> error about files being left in the distdir. If it was a design
> decision, then there should be no errors. If it was an omission, then it
> should be fixed.

There should be no errors from distcheck about them; the distcheck rule
removes $(DIST_ARCHIVES) before invoking the distcleancheck rule.

> The behaviour of distcheck tends to confirm it is  an omission.

No, it confirms that it is intentional.  Do you invoke the
distcleancheck rule yourself, manually?  Why, and in what situation?

Thanks,
Ralf