Auto-configuring software -- potential problems

[Greg Noel]

In article <421 at ogcvax.UUCP> root at ogcvax.UUCP (Bruce Jerrick) has some good
comments about reasonable ways to provide software that runs on a variety
of Unix variants.  I agree with all of it, but I wish to pick a nit with this:
>
>2.  Have a "clean:" target in the Makefile that will get rid of
>    files created in the auto-configuration procedure.  Doing
>    a "make clean", then checking the original versions back out
>    should get everything back to the state as it was when distributed.
>
The idea is good, but the actual name of the target should not be "clean:"
if you want to use it on AT&T variants.  The names "all:", "install:",
"clean:", and "clobber:" are conventionally used as targets for compile,
compile/install, remove intermediate files, and remove all created files.
(These targets are used by the automated remake scripts and show up in
a lot of makefiles.  It would be hard to change.)  Perhaps "reset:" or
"startover:" would be a better name.

The referenced note also went to net.sources so I am doing the same for
this note.  Future discussion, if any, should be confined to unix-wizards.
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Torrey Pines       Greg at sdcsvax.UUCP or Greg at nosc.ARPA