Re: GNU Coding Standards, automake, and the recent xz-utils backdoor

[Karl Berry]

    `distcheck` target's prominence to recommend it in the "Standard
    Targets for All Users" section of the GCS? 

Replying as an Automake developer, I have nothing against it in
principle, but it's clearly up to the GNU coding standards
maintainers. As far as I know, that's still rms (for anything
substantive)

FWIW, I expect that few users would actually run make distcheck,
regardless of anything in the GCS.  And of those that do, I suspect
there would be many failures because make distcheck is a complex target
that is not, so far as I understand it, intended to be as perfectly
portable or prerequisite-free as other targets. No doubt it could be
improved in that regard. Not a stopper, just my thoughts.

Thanks for the suggestion,
Karl