Re: [HACKERS] Status of sql_help.h

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> "The `configure' script and the Makefile rules for building and
> installation should not use any utilities directly except these:
>      cat cmp cp diff echo egrep expr false grep install-info
>      ln ls mkdir mv pwd rm rmdir sed sleep sort tar test touch true"
> No awk there either.

Do I need to point out that Perl isn't there either?  But this GNU rule
is irrelevant, because it applies to tools needed to build a standard
*distribution* of a package.  Maintainer tools can include other things.
Using perl to generate sql_help.h seems perfectly appropriate to me,
as I said before.

What I wanted to find out was whether there were a lot of people using
the CVS server who don't have Perl and would object to installing it.
That's what will determine whether we can remove sql_help.h from the CVS
archive (as opposed to distributed tarballs).

>> PS: "make distclean" should probably not remove sql_help.h, for the
>> same reasons that we don't remove gram.c --- it *is* a distributed
>> file, and a particular user might not have the tools to rebuild it.

> That was my bad. For some reason I had the idea that "distclean" stood for
> "distinctly clean" (really clean). :-\ I'll fix that. Perhaps we ought to
> decide on some standard targets. "maintainer-clean" would be the proper
> one to use (in GNU, again).

No, it wouldn't be.  We use distclean precisely as specified in the GNU
coding standards:

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

sql_help.h will now be in the distribution, therefore distclean
shouldn't remove it.
        regards, tom lane