Re: Strange behaviour for make distclean

[Nicola Pero]

> Hi all,
> 
> I just updated CVS and am having a strange error. I forgot the source
> GNUstep.sh and just typed make distclean in core/base
> This is what happened:
> maggy:/usr/src/SPM/gnustep/core/base# make distclean
> /usr/GNUstep/System/Makefiles/common.make:162: base.make: No such file
> or directory
> ./configure
> checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
> checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
> checking target system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
> checking for gcc... gcc
> checking for C compiler default output... a.out
> checking whether the C compiler works... yes
> checking whether we are cross compiling... no
> 
> The first error is right. The ./configure is not imho. make clean does
> the same.

Exactly what is your problem ?

It all looks correct to me ... it seems to be working nicely.

The makefiles (part of the makefiles) are generated by running
./configure.

If you type 'make distclean', this will destroy the generated makefiles,
and you need to run './configure' again before you can give any further
'make (all|install|clean|distclean|tgz|rpm|...)' command.

Now, this is quite annoying, so we've hacked the top-level makefiles so
that they do it automatically for you.  If you type 'make xxx', the
top-level makefile will check that the generated makefiles (required to
perform the 'make xxx') exist.  If they don't, it will automatically run
'./configure' for you to recreate them, then run 'make xxx' again.

The main problem is if you strictly need to run `./configure' with some
arguments ... then you're back to using the manual procedure - after a
'make distclean' you always need to manually rerun `./configure' with your
arguments.  It's impossible for the makefiles to guess them, since after a
'make distclean' the source code should be distclean, so no track or
record of your specific arguments should be recorded anywhere (else, it's
not distclean).