[Emacs-diffs] master 74ab488: Check exit statuses in lib-src/Makefile

[Emacs-diffs] master 74ab488: Check exit statuses in lib-src/Makefile

[Eli Zaretskii]

   mostlyclean:
  -	-rm -f core *.o *.res
  +	rm -f core *.o *.res

   clean: mostlyclean
  -	-rm -f ${EXE_FILES}
  +	rm -f ${EXE_FILES}

   distclean: clean
  -	-rm -f TAGS
  -	-rm -f Makefile blessmail
  +	rm -f TAGS Makefile blessmail

   bootstrap-clean maintainer-clean: distclean
  -	true

   extraclean: maintainer-clean
  -	-rm -f *~ \#*
  +	rm -f *~ \#*


Why should the "*clean*" targets fail when "rm -f" returns a non-zero
exit status?  What are the advantages?

Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 74ab488: Check exit statuses in lib-src/Makefile

[Paul Eggert]

On 01/22/2015 09:54 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Why should the "*clean*" targets fail when "rm -f" returns a non-zero
> exit status?  What are the advantages?

'rm -f FOO' succeeds if FOO already does not exist.  So if 'rm -f FOO' 
fails, 'make clean' did not work and most likely FOO still exists, and 
the situation requires manual attention.

Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 74ab488: Check exit statuses in lib-src/Makefile

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 10:00:14 -0800
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On 01/22/2015 09:54 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > Why should the "*clean*" targets fail when "rm -f" returns a non-zero
> > exit status?  What are the advantages?
> 
> 'rm -f FOO' succeeds if FOO already does not exist.  So if 'rm -f FOO' 
> fails, 'make clean' did not work and most likely FOO still exists, and 
> the situation requires manual attention.

OK, but are we sure "rm -f FOO" behaves like described above on all
supported Posix platforms?  How about OS X or some *BSD?

Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 74ab488: Check exit statuses in lib-src/Makefile

[chad]

> On 22 Jan 2015, at 10:18, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 'rm -f FOO' succeeds if FOO already does not exist.  So if 'rm -f FOO' 
>> fails, 'make clean' did not work and most likely FOO still exists, and 
>> the situation requires manual attention.
> 
> OK, but are we sure "rm -f FOO" behaves like described above on all
> supported Posix platforms?  How about OS X or some *BSD?

FWIW, I can verify that it does behave that way on OS X.

~Chad

Re: [Emacs-diffs] master 74ab488: Check exit statuses in lib-src/Makefile

[Paul Eggert]

On 01/22/2015 10:18 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> are we sure "rm -f FOO" behaves like described above on all
> supported Posix platforms?
Yes, that's been part of the POSIX standard for decades.