Severity: wishlist [CC:ing bug-automake, so that we won't forget about this issue]
Reference: <http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=10819#40> POSIX will say in a future version that running "rm -f" with no argument is OK; we might simplify several automake-generated "cleaning" rules accordingly, to get rid of the awful idiom: test -z "$(VAR)" || rm -f $(VAR) On 02/16/2012 08:15 PM, Philip Rowlands wrote: > On 16/02/2012 18:58, Eric Blake wrote: > >>> so that we could simplify a bunch of automake recipes); but a more extensive >>> probing is needed in this matter I guess. And if you are right (as I hope), >>> then this 'rm' feature could be documented in the Autoconf manual. >> >> Yep, I think that's appropriate, as it is unlikely that we will come up >> with any counterexamples any time soon. > > As the now-POSIX-infringing behaviour is simple to detect, couldn't automake > detect > it early and die with a helpful message, or is that contrary to its > philosophy? > Well, that might be an overkill, since it appears that all the non-museum implementations of 'rm' have the behaviour we want. But I agree that, in case we ever stumble upon a system violating this new expectation, adding proper configure-time probing and warning might be helpful (and might convince the users of such an inferior system to start using GNU coreutils). Regards, Stefano