Re: Lintian: outdated-autotools-helper-file
Raphael Geissert <atomo64+debian@gmail.com> writes:
> Quoting the Debian Policy, section 4.9 Main building script: debian/rules[1]
>
>> clean
>>
>> This must undo any effects that the build and binary targets may have had,
>> except that it should leave alone any output files created in the parent
>> directory by a run of a binary target.
>
> So according to the policy the clean target must put the original files back
> on place.
This Policy dictate as written is pretty widely ignored and (IMO) is
somewhat hard to defend in several of its implications. We haven't
figured out what to say instead, but deleting the files is fairly common
right now.
See http://bugs.debian.org/397939 for some additional discussion.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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