What is the difference between make and make dist?

5
votes

What's the difference between make and make dist? I understand that dist is a "target", but what target is used by default, and what does the dist target typically do differently from the default make?

1
makefile
gnu.org/software/make/manual/… – user657267
That sounds like it just makes a source bundle but make dist on the Xen repo complies everything – Dessa Simpson
Xen for whatever reason chose to make dist an alias of all, there's no difference in this case, but generally dist creates a source distribution. – user657267

1 Answers

4
votes

"dist" is used to create a distribution tar file for this program. Please refer https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Standard-Targets.html for more details.