[Bug-stow] some minor errors in stow's Makefile.am

[Stefano Lattarini]

Hi!

While looking in stow's Makefile.am, I've noticed few minor errors
and blunders, and I think you might want to know about them.

1. The files `bin/stow' and `bin/chkstow' are distributed, but are also
   always rebuilt on the user's system, since they depend on `Makefile'
   (and rightly so, since they need the value of `$(PERL)' determined at
   configure time).  The right fix is to not distribute these scripts,
   but only the corresponding `*.in' files they are built from.

2. The rule to rebuild `doc/stow.8' is marked as "for developers only",
   but lists as dependencies the files `bin/stow' and  Makefile'; since
   these files are always rebuilt on the user's system (and this is
   expected and correct), the `doc/stow.8' files will always be rebuilt
   too, which seems wrong for a target that is meant "for developers
   only".  See also:
    <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/distcleancheck.html>
   for a description of a similar problem, and possible fixes.

3. A similar problem is present for the `ChangeLog' file, which too depends
   on `Makefile' (I guess this is to ensure that the ChangeLog is remade
   whenever the recipe to build it gets changed).  But there is a more
   serious problem here, since the dependency "ChangeLog: Makefile" is
   not enough to ensure that the ChangeLog is really rebuilt whenever
   out-of-date; in fact, any git commit that doesn't cause the Makefile
   to become out-of-date won't trigger a rebuilt of the ChangeLog, thus
   leaving it out-of-sync w.r.t. the git history.

4. I see that the `clean-local' rule removes semo distributed files.  This
   is wrong, and in contrast with the GNU coding standards, which say that
   "make check" and "make distcheck" should not delete files that comes
   with the distribution, even if they are auto-generated.  One should use
   the `maintainer-clean' target to remove such files.

Regards,
  Stefano

P.S. please keep me in CC:, since I'm not subscribed.