Re: mostlyclean and texinfo outputs (was: Installing gnulib from git)

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Ralf,

Thanks for pursuing this.

> > For the {dvi,ps} formats this is (arguably) a bug in automake,
> 
> I agree; automake should remove {html,dvi,ps,pdf} only upon 'clean', but
> not upon 'mostlyclean'.  Only the latex by-products should be removed
> upon 'mostlyclean'.

OK, this is issue #1.

> > $ make -n mostlyclean
> > rm -rf gettext.am gettext.ams gettext.aux gettext.cp gettext.cps gettext.ef 
> > \
> >           gettext.em gettext.ems gettext.ev gettext.fn gettext.kw \
> >           gettext.ky gettext.kys gettext.log gettext.op gettext.ops \
> >           gettext.pg gettext.pgs gettext.tmp gettext.toc gettext.tp \
> >           gettext.tps gettext.vr gettext.vrs gettext.dvi gettext.pdf \
> >           gettext.ps gettext.html
> 
> > So, it removes the temporary files and also the {html,dvi,ps,pdf} formatted
> > documentation but keeps the info formatted documentation. Why does it treat
> > the various formats differently?
> 
> One part is easily explained: info is not removed with 'mostlyclean' nor
> with 'clean', but only with 'maintainer-clean', because info files are
> distributed.

Issue #2: If I decide to distribute PDF formatted documentation, how to I tell
automake to not remove these files during "make clean" or "make mostlyclean"?

Testcase: The doc/ directory in GNU hello. Neither a definition
      EXTRA_DIST = hello.pdf
nor a dependency
      install : install-pdf
did have the desired effect.

Likewise for {html,dvi,ps} formatted documentation.

Bruno