`distcheck` target's prominence to recommend it in the "Standard Targets for All Users" section of the GCS?
Replying as an Automake developer, I have nothing against it in principle, but it's clearly up to the GNU coding standards maintainers. As far as I know, that's still rms (for anything substantive) FWIW, I expect that few users would actually run make distcheck, regardless of anything in the GCS. And of those that do, I suspect there would be many failures because make distcheck is a complex target that is not, so far as I understand it, intended to be as perfectly portable or prerequisite-free as other targets. No doubt it could be improved in that regard. Not a stopper, just my thoughts. Thanks for the suggestion, Karl