[gambit-list] Proposed changes to makefile targets

Marc Feeley feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Fri Jun 5 18:47:05 EDT 2009


Currently the Gambit makefiles support these targets (and more):

   % make mostlyclean         Removes all the files that can be
                              regenerated using standard tools
                              (C compiler, TeX, etc).  The C files
                              generated by gsc, and the gsi and
                              gsc executables are not removed.

   % make clean               Removes all the files that can be
                              regenerated by a "make" (object files,
                              C files generated by gsc, etc) **except**
                              gsi and gsc.  This is useful to
                              bootstrap from the Scheme sources
                              after gsc has been built with an
                              initial "make bootstrap".

   % make realclean           Like "make clean", but also removes
                              gsi and gsc, and all the makefiles
                              generated by the configure script.

This is often confusing for newcomers because in most open-source  
projects a "make clean" followed by "make" usually restarts the build  
process from the state of the distributed sources.  Currently, the  
Gambit makefiles will remove all the C files generated by gsc (which  
are distributed in the tar file), so in fact the system won't build  
unless the user had successfully done a "make bootstrap".

To remove the confusion I'm going to rename the targets as follows:

    new "clean" target = old "mostlyclean" target

    new "realclean" target = old "clean" target + old "realclean" target

The mostlyclean target will be removed.

Moreover, a "make" will be equivalent to a "make bootstrap" unless the  
gsc-comp (Gambit compiler for bootstrapping) exists.  This way, the  
user can get out of trouble if he does a "make realclean" after a  
"make".

Please let me know if you have suggestions.

Marc




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