Re: How thorough must the clean target be?

[ucko@debian.org (Aaron M. Ucko)]

Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes:

> In practice, I think that would rule out running Autoconf and Automake at
> build time except for simple packages, as those programs make fairly
> widespread changes.

I'd characterize this as mainly a problem with automake (and libtool,
IIRC, though I generally try to stay clear of both), as aclocal,
autoconf, and autoheader generally only change one file apiece.
Anyway, one (admittedly somewhat heavyweight) solution for such cases
is to copy *everything* to a new directory, modify it to your heart's
content, and blow it away when done.

-- 
Aaron M. Ucko, KB1CJC (amu at alum.mit.edu, ucko at debian.org)
Finger amu@monk.mit.edu (NOT a valid e-mail address) for more info.