make mrproper vs make distclean in the Linux kernel

Question

I understood the difference between make clean and make mrproper.

make clean will only remove the generated files (.o/.ko) but not the configuration files and the files in include/generated, include/config.

make mrproper will remove the configuration files as well as files in include/generated, include/config.

What is the purpose of make distclean? make help says

mrproper + remove editor backup and patch files

I added a patch file using git format-patch -1, but it wasn't deleted when make distclean was executed.

Answer 1

make distclean builds on top of make mrproper (so it deletes everything that make mrproper deletes) and in addition:

• deletes temporary code navigation files: tags TAGS cscope* GPATH GTAGS GRTAGS GSYMS;
• deletes backup files: *~ #*# *%;
• deletes what could more accurately be referred to as “patch artifacts”, i.e. files generated as a side-effect of working with patches: *.orig *.rej *.bak;
• deletes core dumps.

It doesn’t delete files with a .patch extension, such as those generated by git format-patch.