AIX files stay even if we run make clean on the directory, I think they should be cleared

What are these .lst files? What creates them?

the XLC compiler has an option to create "listing" files. The content depends on the arguments passed to the xlc compilers.

From memory (as I always need to look them up) these include -qinfo and -qsource (plus arguments)

FYI: besides showing info such as macro substitution these are also the files that would include the generate assembly/machine instructions.

.lst files are not created by default (by Python configure and make). If they are there, there are a user generated file. As .lst files are created in the cwd (current working directory) I keep myself 'clean' by building out of tree.

> .lst files are not created by default (by Python configure and make).

They are an artifact when I configure with xlc (CC=xlc ./configure && make -j24), and as far as I know we already have some compiler-specific clear conditions.

New changeset 1b6b0e78fef2549cc9b447cbededb638f7388e02 by Batuhan Taşkaya in branch 'master':
bpo-40069: Clear out .lst files on make clean (GH-19169)
https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/1b6b0e78fef2549cc9b447cbededb638f7388e02

Ok. I merged your PR.

I don't think that it's worth it to backport to 3.7 and 3.8. "git clean -fdx" can be used for stable branches to remove *all* files not tracked by Git (not only .lst files).

FYI: IMHO it is artifact of the way an xlc compiler is setup. Maybe this is a new default (I see they changed the names of config files).

On my server (with xlc v11) I do not get them, but on a different server (with xlc v13) I do get .lst files.

So, seems it is now a good idea to have this.

Likely somewhere in the Python configuration process it is probing a command line option that emits a .lst file.