Date:        29 Apr 2001 17:11:17 +0100
    From:        "Georges Heinesch" <geohei-ml@geohei.lu>
    Message-ID:  <784.519T899T10312399geohei9@attglobal.net>

  | If you say "make clean" inside a package (e.g.
  | "/usr/pkgsrc/x11/xworkd"), the distfiles should not be removed?

That's right, they shouldn't (they cost way too much to download
to throw them away on a whim, and as you can't guarantee that the
original site will still have the distfile if you go back to fetch
it again, you need it on the off chance something goes wrong and
you want to debug things).

"make clean" has never removed everything - only ever all those things
that are "trivial" in some sense to recreate.

Because of that, people have been inventing other make targets to
really return things to as close a virginal state as possible, called
"make allclean", "make realclean", ...

The one that applies here is "make distclean".

"make clean" also won't throw away a compiled binary package (if you've
finished doing "make package") - "make distclean" does.

If all you want is to trash distfiles to save space, then "rm *" in the
distfiles directory is pretty easy (and it is such fun to run "rm *"
and mean it every now and again...)

kre