Re: slow "make clean"

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Ralf,

* Ralf Hemmecke wrote on Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 11:46:55PM CET:
> I've a project that must use subdir-objects, because of filename
> clashes in subdirectories (non-recursive build).

> The generated Makefile contains a target "mostlyclean-compile" which
> has about 1500 lines that look like
> 
>   -rm -f src/foo/foo.$(OBJEXT)
>   -rm -f src/foo/foo.lo
>   ...
> 
> Of course it takes ages to say "make clean". About 10 sec.
> 
> Wouldn't it be faster if there were just one call to rm or at least
> block the number of arguments to rm so that the maximal argument
> lenght is not exceeded?

Yes, we could do the latter, I suppose.

> Any idea how I can speed that up?

You mean, as a workaround until Automake is improved?  You could
overwrite the rule in your Makefile.am:

mostlyclean-compile:
        -find . -name \*.lo -o -name \*.$(OBJEXT) -print | xargs rm -f

But note that automake may generate other files that would need to be
mostlyclean'ed too, so the above could be insufficient for your project.

Thanks for the report,
Ralf