Re: [HACKERS] Status of sql_help.h

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)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. If you have unpacked the
source and built the program without creating any other files,
`make distclean' should leave only 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