Cleaning up make clean's behavior

Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Jeremiah]

As running make clean breaks the bootstrap script.
I propose we leverage git's shallow clones (git clone --depth 1 $URL)
and include the .git directory with the repo such that we could simply
have make clean check for git and if it exists run git clean -xdf and
then only if git fails to exist, fallback to the existing broken form;
which needs to be corrected.

per discussion with g_bor[m] about the default automake clean rules
being used currently; and per their suggestion bringing this question to
this distribution list for further discussion.

Additional wouldn't one want to pack the .git in the tarball to enable a
simplified update method.

jlicht pointed out that this would not be a problem yet for guix, but it
 does seem unconventional. It would not make sense for some bigger-repo projects (e.g. emacs) for sure though

Given that discussion background does anyone have any problems, concerns
or issues with the change proposed?

Re: Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Nils Gillmann]

Hi Jeremiah,

Jeremiah@pdp10.guru transcribed 946 bytes:
> As running make clean breaks the bootstrap script.
> I propose we leverage git's shallow clones (git clone --depth 1 $URL)
> and include the .git directory with the repo such that we could simply
> have make clean check for git and if it exists run git clean -xdf and
> then only if git fails to exist, fallback to the existing broken form;
> which needs to be corrected.
> 
> per discussion with g_bor[m] about the default automake clean rules
> being used currently; and per their suggestion bringing this question to
> this distribution list for further discussion.

Where did this discussion take place? Would be good to read some
details if possible.

ng0

> Additional wouldn't one want to pack the .git in the tarball to enable a
> simplified update method.
> 
> jlicht pointed out that this would not be a problem yet for guix, but it
>  does seem unconventional. It would not make sense for some bigger-repo projects (e.g. emacs) for sure though
> 
> Given that discussion background does anyone have any problems, concerns
> or issues with the change proposed?
> 

Re: Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Gábor Boskovits]

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2018-06-02 18:46 GMT+02:00 Nils Gillmann <ng0@n0.is>:

> Hi Jeremiah,
>
> Jeremiah@pdp10.guru transcribed 946 bytes:
> > As running make clean breaks the bootstrap script.
> > I propose we leverage git's shallow clones (git clone --depth 1 $URL)
> > and include the .git directory with the repo such that we could simply
> > have make clean check for git and if it exists run git clean -xdf and
> > then only if git fails to exist, fallback to the existing broken form;
> > which needs to be corrected.
> >
> > per discussion with g_bor[m] about the default automake clean rules
> > being used currently; and per their suggestion bringing this question to
> > this distribution list for further discussion.
>
> Where did this discussion take place? Would be good to read some
> details if possible.
>
> ng0
>
> > Additional wouldn't one want to pack the .git in the tarball to enable a
> > simplified update method.
> >
> > jlicht pointed out that this would not be a problem yet for guix, but it
> >  does seem unconventional. It would not make sense for some bigger-repo
> projects (e.g. emacs) for sure though
> >
> > Given that discussion background does anyone have any problems, concerns
> > or issues with the change proposed?
> >
>
> It was on #guix. Currently I have found what causes the problem with make
clean. I'm working on an alternative fix, but the idea outlined here seems
to worth discussing.

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Re: Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Mark H Weaver]

Jeremiah@pdp10.guru writes:

> As running make clean breaks the bootstrap script.
> I propose we leverage git's shallow clones (git clone --depth 1 $URL)
> and include the .git directory with the repo such that we could simply
> have make clean check for git and if it exists run git clean -xdf and
> then only if git fails to exist, fallback to the existing broken form;
> which needs to be corrected.

I don't think we should change "make clean" to delete files in the
working directory that were not created by our build system.

I, for one, keep many files of notes and draft patches in my Guix
working directory.  I've been doing this for years.  If "make clean"
were suddenly changed to delete all of these files, I would lose data
and probably be very angry.

I happened to see this message, but if I had been focused on other
things, I might well have missed it.  It's not practical for us to
ensure that everyone is warned about this proposed change, so there's no
way for us to avoid the risk that valuable user data would be deleted.

Therefore, we should reject this proposal.

In general, we should be *very* reluctant to delete files that we know
nothing about.  We should be reluctant to do it even if there were a
very compelling reason for it.  Simply wanting to clean up to avoid
unsightly clutter falls far short of a compelling reason.

Thoughts?

      Mark

Re: Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Vincent Legoll]

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Hello


On Sunday, June 3, 2018, Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> wrote:

> I don't think we should change "make clean" to delete files in the
> working directory that were not created by our build system.
>
> I, for one, keep many files of notes and draft patches in my Guix
> working directory.  I've been doing this for years.  If "make clean"
> were suddenly changed to delete all of these files, I would lose data
> and probably be very angry.
>
> I happened to see this message, but if I had been focused on other
> things, I might well have missed it.  It's not practical for us to
> ensure that everyone is warned about this proposed change, so there's no
> way for us to avoid the risk that valuable user data would be deleted.
>
> Therefore, we should reject this proposal.
>
> In general, we should be *very* reluctant to delete files that we know
> nothing about.  We should be reluctant to do it even if there were a
> very compelling reason for it.  Simply wanting to clean up to avoid
> unsightly clutter falls far short of a compelling reason.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>       Mark
>
>
+1 totally agree


-- 
Vincent Legoll

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Re: Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Jeremiah@pdp10.guru skribis:

> As running make clean breaks the bootstrap script.

Could you clarify what the problem is?

(Besides I agree with Mark that “make clean” should not delete files it
doesn’t know about.)

Ludo’.

Re: Cleaning up make clean's behavior

[Chris Marusich]

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ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Could you clarify what the problem is?
>
> (Besides I agree with Mark that “make clean” should not delete files it
> doesn’t know about.)

I also agree.

FYI, to delete everything and return to a pristine Git repository state,
I usually do this:

    # Clean everything the Makefile knows about.
    make distclean
    # Clean everything Git doesn't track.
    git clean -dfx
    # Reset anything else back to whatever is in HEAD.
    git reset --hard

Be careful though, because doing that is, of course, destructive.

-- 
Chris

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