Alexandre Duret-Lutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Warning: I'm going to give the "AM_MAINTAINER_MODE is pure evil > on a stick" point of view. I know some people find it useful > (although I don't know when).
I'm sure the reasons you gave are valid (and I was not aware of some of the downsides you mentioned), but I thought I would demonstrate a valid use for it. In the gimp-print source tree, there are a number of files which we ship in the distributed tarball pre-built. These are PDF and HTML versions of SGML manuals and PostScript versions of Texinfo manuals. We do not want an end-user to have to have these tools installed. The SGML tools are notoriously fragile (they are currently partly broken on my system!), and not all systems will have a teTeX installation. Maintainer mode is used to modify what is cleaned. If maint-mode is not enabled, then the pre-built files will never be cleaned. If it is used, by users who explicitly enable it, then they will be removed. Doing this allows us to require only developers to have a greater set of tools to be installed and configured, without passing on the burden to our users. Regards, Roger -- Roger Leigh ** Registration Number: 151826, http://counter.li.org ** Need Epson Stylus Utilities? http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 available on public keyservers