Re: Git help please - checking out old commit doesn't find lib/gnulib.mk.in.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Paul.

On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 11:13:53 -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 11/13/2017 10:53 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > make distclean is broken.  It purports to remove all files generated by
> > "configuring or building the program".

> The intent is that 'make distclean' gets you back to a distribution 
> tarball, if all you've done is 'configure; make'. But that doesn't seem 
> to be what you're asking for. If I understand you correctly, you want 
> something that gets you back to a fresh git checkout if all you've done 
> is './autogen.sh; ./configure; make', and since 'make distclean' doesn't 
> do what you're asking for, you're saying it's broken. If I'm right, it 
> would be more accurate to say that 'make distclean' is simply a tool 
> that doesn't do what you want.

It's a tool that doesn't do what it says on the tin.  What it says is:

# make distclean
#      Delete all files from the current directory that are created by
#      configuring or building the program.  If you have unpacked the
#      source and built the program without creating any other files,
#      'make distclean' should leave only the files that were in the
#      distribution.

What it doesn't say is "Delete all files ..... or building the program,
which were created from an Emacs distribution."

> Perhaps someone (you?) could implement a 'make gitclean' that does what 
> you want.

Well, first I'll follow Eli's suggestion and try make extraclean.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).