[Python-Dev] End of the mystery "@README.txt Mercurial bug"

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Victor Stinner writes:

 > In my opinion, make distclean should only remove files generated by
 > configure and a build. It should not remove random files.

FWIW, the GNU standard for these targets is something like:

## make clean  or  make mostlyclean
##      Delete all files from the current directory that are normally
##      created by building the program.  Don't delete the files that
##      record the configuration.  Also preserve files that could be
##      made by building, but normally aren't because the distribution
##      comes with them.
##      Delete `.dvi' files here if they are not part of the
##      distribution.

## make distclean
##      Delete all files from the current directory that are created by
##      configuring or building the program.  If you have unpacked the
##      source and built the program without creating any other files,
##      `make distclean' should leave only the files that were in the
##      distribution.

## make realclean
##      Delete everything from the current directory that can be
##      reconstructed with this Makefile.  This typically includes
##      everything deleted by distclean, plus more: C source files
##      produced by Bison, tags tables, info files, and so on.

## make extraclean
##      Still more severe - delete backup and autosave files, too.

This is from the XEmacs Makefile.in.in, so it's not authoritative.
Still, it seems pretty intuitive and presumably is in wide use, not to
forget matching Victor's preferred usage for 'distclean'.