Re: maintainer mode

[Roger Leigh]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:

> >>> "Roger" == Roger Leigh <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
>  Roger> In the gimp-print source tree, there are a number of
>  Roger> files which we ship in the distributed tarball
>  Roger> pre-built.  These are PDF and HTML versions of SGML
>  Roger> manuals and PostScript versions of Texinfo manuals.  We
>  Roger> do not want an end-user to have to have these tools
>  Roger> installed.  The SGML tools are notoriously fragile (they
>  Roger> are currently partly broken on my system!), and not all
>  Roger> systems will have a teTeX installation.
> 
>  Roger> Maintainer mode is used to modify what is cleaned.  If
>  Roger> maint-mode is not enabled, then the pre-built files will
>  Roger> never be cleaned.
> 
> To some extent, this deviates from the conventions that Automake
> tries to help you follow.  `make clean' and `make distclean' are
> not expected to clean a file which is distributed: one generally
> uses `make maintainer-clean' to clean files that requires
> maintainer tools.  An AM_MAINTAINER_MODE-free project could
> simply have these PDF and HTML files listed in
> MAINTAINERCLEANFILES.

In our case, `maintainer-clean' /will/ always clean them.  It's just
that normal maintainers (such as myself) /do/ want the docs cleaned by
`clean', so that we don't have to use `maintainer-clean' and blow
everything else away when we are hacking on the docs.

> Another approach would be to check for the SGML tools in
> configure, define an AM_CONDITIONAL for this, and define your
> clean rule conditionally.

We did do this originally.  However, do to the problems that users
with the tools reported, we decided to distribute the docs pre-built.

> (BTW, I think the following a bug in Automake: there are some
> files it always cleans for you, without wondering whether they
> are distributed or not.  Unfortunately the postscripts built by
> the Texi rules are amongst them; so, somehow, it makes sense
> that you clean the PDF and HTML at the same time.)

It would be nice if there was an easy way to do this (we had to
redefine amostlyclean-aminfo' to stop the manual being cleaned).

Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh
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