Re: [PATCH v2] Makefile: Remove generated files when doing 'distclean' (and 'clean')

[Peter Maydell]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2019 at 13:37, Thomas Huth <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On 08/10/2019 14.18, Aleksandar Markovic wrote:
> > If I remember well, QAPI-related c files are generated while doing
> > 'make'. If that is true, these files should be deleted by 'make clean',
> > shouldn't they?
>
> I think that's a philosophical question. Should "make clean" delete all
> files that have been generated by a Makefile (i.e. not by "configure"),
> or rather mainly the binary files?

https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Clean.html

The autoconf manual suggests some heuristics:
 - If make built it, and it is commonly something that one would want
   to rebuild (for instance, a .o file), then mostlyclean should delete it.
 - Otherwise, if make built it, then clean should delete it.
 - If configure built it, then distclean should delete it.
 - If the maintainer built it (for instance, a .info file), then
   maintainer-clean should delete it. However maintainer-clean should
   not delete anything that needs to exist in order to run
'./configure && make'.

Not all of that applies for QEMU, but it seems like a reasonable
set of ideas.

thanks
-- PMM