[Python-Dev] make clean and make clobber semantics

[Guido van Rossum]

I just noticed for the first time that the semantics of "make clean"
and "make clobber" have changed.  "make clean" used to remove the .so
files too, AFAIK, but no longer does so.  "make clean" used to leave
the configuration files lying around, but now seems to remove at least
some of them.

One of the consequences of all this is that, after "make clean",
another "make" doesn't rebuild the extensions, because setup.py finds
that the .so files are still there and decides not to rebuild the
missing .o's.

Another consequence is that after "make clobber" you have to rerun the
configure script (or say "make recheck").  This takes almost as long
as the rest of the build...

In other words, "make clean" doesn't go far enough, and "make clobber"
goes too far, for what I seem to want most often (recompile every C
source file).

Can someone suggest a fix?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)