Re: [PATCH 4/4] New automake command line option `--silent-rules'.

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Ralf Corsepius wrote on Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 03:57:58PM CET:
> Jan Engelhardt wrote:
>> On Monday 2009-03-09 15:44, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
>>>> For this patch, I'm unsure if we should even add it at all.
>>>>
>>> FWIW: I am opposed to it.

I suppose you are opposed to the whole topic, rather than only to patch
number 4?

>>> All this silencing stuff does is to add further potential sources of errors.

Certainly.  All new code does this, to some degree.  The patches in the
branch should not modify automake's output much if the `silent' option
is not used.  Of course there can still be regressions due to necesarily
changed code inside automake (see patch 1 for a minor known example that
I'll fix before merging the branch).

My particular question above was meant as: I am unsure whether the
fourth patch in the series is worth applying.  I do consider the series
worth applying, and I will use patches 1-3 plus fixes unless we find a
very serious issue with it.

My current take on patch 4 is this:

It has the chance of making silent rebuilds easy for distributors, but
OTOH is has the potential downside of taking the decision away from the
package maintainer.  I definitely want the package maintainer to be able
to say: "I do not want to see bug reports that lack compile command
lines; thus I do not enable the `silent' feature."  Aside, patch 4 also
has rebuild issues ATM (the --silent-rules arg is not stored in the
rebuild rule).

So, I'm considering reverting patch 4.

Cheers,
Ralf, wishing people would spend as much time writing tests as they
would discussing