[Coin-discuss] True 'make distclean'

[fmargot at andrew.cmu.edu]

Andreas:

On Sat, 24 Jun 2006, Andreas Waechter wrote:

> Hi Francois,
>
>> I wonder if it would not be useful to have a command that truly put
>> the package back to its original state, i.e. like 'make distclean' but 
>> erasing coin-Pkg/include and coin-Pkg/lib too. This is useful
>> when recompiling after changing static/share options as well as
>> other options of configure.
>> With the current 'make distclean' you might end up with shared
>> and static versions of the libraries that do not match for other
>> options.
>
> make uninstall
>
> removes everything that has been installed.
>
> It is very difficult to change the behavior of default targets.  What we 
> could do is to add a new target 'allclean' that first executes 'uninstall' 
> and then 'distclean'

I was not aware of uninstall. My point is that when we say 'make distclean'
before running configure with changed parameters, it would be safer
to say 'make uninstall', and 'make distclean'. Or if a 'make allclean'
is created, then mention that one.

>
>> Of course, you are supposed to know what you are doing, but people just 
>> starting to use the new build system might no realize that
>> erasing the lib directory is a must in some situations when changing
>> options to configure. In fact, I have not seen a mention of this
>> anywhere on the Buildtool Trac pages.
>
> Remember, those are wiki pages - feel free to add this information at the 
> appropriate place ;)
>

I prefer to be reasonably sure of something before modifying the pages.
If an "allclean" exists or is created, it is better to mention it. If
not, 'make uninstall' and 'make distclean' should be used.

>> I also think that Laci's suggestion to have a build directory
>> where configure is run is a much better setup than running
>> configure from the main directory of a package. But even this
>> does not solve the above problem.
>
> I guess what you mean is described at the bottom of
>
> https://projects.coin-or.org/BuildTools/wiki/user-configure
>
> as "Performing a VPATH Compilation".

Indeed.

Francois