Re: Software/HD ecology

[Eli Zaretskii]

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Anil Trivedi wrote:

> I would like to offer a few general suggestions for any large program,
> not just emacs.

Like Miles pointed out, these suggestions are already implemented in 
Emacs (and are, in fact, part of GNU coding standards, so should be in 
any GNU software package).

> First of all, you should have a clear idea as to which files are needed
> to complie the program but not to run it later, and which ones will be
> needed forever to run the program.

Done.

> 1. You need "clean" and "distclean" to recover from failed compile
> attempts.

Emacs has these.

> 2. Once the program compiles, and works fine, the user should be able
> to delete all files that were needed in compiling but will not be
> needed in running it, or in uninstalling it.

Done.  You say "make install", and after that you can delete the entire 
source tree where you built Emacs.  All files that are needed to run 
Emacs are copied by "make install" into the installation directories.

> 3. Finally, should the user decide that this is not his kind of progam,
> there should be an uninstall option that does safely and cleanly remove
> everything.

That'd be "make uninstall".