On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 12:16:17AM +0100, Bas Wijnen wrote: > At this moment however, I don't think there is consensus yet that it is > always better to remove all generated files, including > autotools-generated stuff, in the clean target.
Well, I haven't seen many people claiming that it is really bad to do this so far, so I'll try to make sure that we can record this as consensus. Please, if anyone thinks that it should be allowed for the clean target to keep some generated files, speak up. And please argue why you think so, so we can flame^Wtalk about it. :-) I'll have one argument myself first: If a generated file is needed by the build, and it cannot be regenerated for some reason, for example as a workaround for a bug (such as #441126; read only the second e-mail) or to bootstrap a compiler build, then this is acceptable. However, this file may not be overwritten during the build. If overwriting is desired, it should be copied, the copy should be overwritten, and the copy must be removed by the clean target. In other words, it must be used as a source file by the build. This mail will automatically go to -policy. I've added the autotools-dev PTS address. Followups probably won't do that, since they don't have the X-PTS-Approved header. So if you're not reading this on -policy, but have an opinion, please follow the discussion there (or through the BTS). Thanks, Bas -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://pcbcn10.phys.rug.nl/e-mail.html
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