Re: Patch proposal: Add --clean options to unbootstrap a project.

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Benoit,

* Benoit Sigoure wrote on Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 08:14:12AM CEST:
> Quoting Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden>:
> >* Benoit Sigoure wrote on Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 12:17:07AM CEST:
> >>+      system ('rm -rf autom4te.cache');
> >
> >Ah, one bit that is not general: the name of the cache directory may be
> >customized, see `(autoconf.info)Customizing autom4te'.  I suppose a nice
> >and clean implementation would have `autom4te --clean' and let
> >autoreconf invoke that.  It in turn would remove the cache directory
> >only if caching was enabled and a relative path, but rather not with an
> >absolute path.
> 
> After going through the code of autoconf, autoheader and aclocal  
> (which seem to be the only toold to directly invoke autom4te) I can't  
> see how one could change the cache directory.  Ah yes, there is not  
> work around: env AUTOM4TE='autom4te --cache=/some/where'.

Well, that, or

cat > ~/.autom4te.cfg <<EOF
## ------------------ ##
## User Preferences.  ##
## ------------------ ##

begin-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
args: --cache=AuToM4Te.CaChe
end-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
EOF

See here:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Customizing-autom4te.html>

> I highly  
> doubt this would ever happen and would it ever do, I think the user  
> (who obviously knows what he is doing) would not like to remove his  
> own cache.  Moreover it would be fragile because he would have to  
> invoke autoreconf --clean with the same environment variable.

Yes I agree that if one sets $AUTOM4TE for one thing we can expect the
user to also set it for --clean.  Having ~/.autom4te.cfg customization
is not so uncommon though, there is at least one prominent GNU developer
who has caching turned off.  Somebody's experimented with a global cache
a while ago.

> New patch attached with the two minor nits noticed above corrected.  I  
> haven't done anything WRT `rm -fr autom4te.cache'.

I agree it's not a huge issue, but it would be nice from a code
cleanliness POV: the string autom4te.cache would occur exactly one,
namely in the config file of autom4te, not anywhere else in Autoconf
nor Automake's program code.  If you want me to, I can write that bit
(eventually).

Cheers,
Ralf