If the buildroot configuration has a custom BR2_DL_DIR and/or BR2_HOST_DIR (in my case it points to a path outside of the buildroot tree), then the 'make clean' and 'make distclean' commands do not remove the content of these directories. Is it a bug or normal behaviour that custom download and host directories are excluded from the cleanup?
For BR2_DL_DIR, this is clearly an intended behavior. However, for BR2_HOST_DIR, it does remove it properly. See: $ grep ^BR2_HOST_DIR .config BR2_HOST_DIR="/tmp/foobar-host" $ ls /tmp/foobar-host/ arm-buildroot-linux-uclibcgnueabi bin etc include lib lib64 opt share usr $ make clean rm -rf /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/target /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/images /tmp/foobar-host /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/host \ /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/build /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/staging \ /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/legal-info /home/thomas/projets/buildroot/output/graphs $ ls /tmp/foobar-host/ ls: cannot access '/tmp/foobar-host/': No such file or directory I used "make clean", but "make distclean" implies "make clean". So I think it all works as intended.