Re: [PATCH] Makefile: mrproper deletes signing_key.x509

[David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>]

Nicolas Schier <nicolas.schier@linux.dev> wrote:

> 'make mrproper' is meant to prepare the source tree to be as pristine as 
> possible for the given architecture.  This includes removal of any 
> configuration file(s) that influence subsequent builds.  From kbuild 
> point of view, certs/x509.genkey is also a kind of a configuration file, 
> as leaving it in tree after mrproper creates different build results 
> compared to a build from a really pristine source tree.
> 
> Iff the certs/ maintainers think that retaining a user x509.genkey file 
> over a mrproper makes sense, then we should probably adjust the rule for 
> generating $(objtree)/certs/x509.genkey, e.g. by allowing to provide one 
> by environment variable.
> 
> David or David, do you have an opinion on this?

make distclean or make mrproper should delete the key.  As you say, it's
thoroughly cleaning out the source tree - it used to be so that you could more
easily diff it for prepping a patch, I guess.  make clean, OTOH, should not.

David