On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 7:16 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > I still don't understand what mean here, since it's been demonstrated
> > several times that (in certain circumstances) people have to say "make
> > extraclean" to build a working Emacs executable.
>
> "make extraclean" is only needed when doing something very drastic,
> like switching to a very different branch.  That is an extremely rare
> (if not improbable) use case, so IMO having everyone pay for it is
> unjustified.
>
> > So "make bootstrap" doesn't do what it says on the tin
>
> But it does: it bootstraps the current configuration of Emacs by doing
> what is necessary, but not more than that.
>
> It sounds like you think that "make bootstrap" is equivalent to
> checking out a pristine clone.  But that is not the case, at least not
> for most people who use that target.
>

Without getting too caught up in the details of who-said-what-when, when I
read the Makefile, this text:

# make bootstrap
> #      Removes all the compiled files to force a new bootstrap from a
> #      clean slate, and then build in the normal way.


..it makes me think something much closer to what I think Lars was saying
"make bootstrap" should do than "only use this if you don't have
src/{t,}emacs", which is roughly how I interpret (perhaps wrongly) what Eli
is suggesting "make boostrap" is for. It also surprises me that emacs'
build system needs clean, mostlyclean, distclean, maintainer-clean,
extraclean, and bootstrap, but that overhead seems very low, mostly
confusion around which to use.

Probably, I'm biased by my own use-case, which is roughly: I periodically
(multiple times a week) pull and bootstrap emacs using a custom build
script, so I can test the latest and greatest of emacs-devel. When I do
work on specific changes myself, I use "make all" nearly all the time (I
have memories of needing to bootstrap now and then, but I can't recall the
circumstances). That said, I'm using a moderately performant machine,
(currently 3 years old, before that up to 8 years old) and typically run
-j6.

Hope that helps.
~Chad