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

[Ralf Corsepius]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * 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.

Right .. and the autotools have an infamous record of doing so.

> The patches in the
> branch should not modify automake's output much if the `silent' option
> is not used.

%VERBOSE%

> 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 haven't checked all details of the patches, because I consider this 
whole endeavor (adding --silent) to be adding nothing but useless bloat 
to cater some people's demands, who are not able to understand the harm 
"silencing" does.

> 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.
Well, I disagree - Once it's in you will not be able to get rid of it 
for at least the next decade.

> My current take on patch 4 is this:
>
> It has the chance of making silent rebuilds easy for distributors,

Depends on whom you are referring to as "distributors"

Upstream maintainers (people who distribute tarballs) are interested 
seeing verbose logs, to be able to go after issues their users have.
"Silencing" will force them to tell their users to "please disable 
silencing", your logs don't contain sufficient information.

OS vendors/distributors are interested in seeing verbose logs, because 
they typically are running build jobs in batches and therefore have a 
need to analyze their batches' logs (not only in case of breakdowns, but 
also to verify "correct operation").

[FWIW: In Fedora, we explicitly mandate verbose cmake logs for this 
purpose. One side-effect of cmake using a "silent" default: many 
packages suffer from "silent bugs".]

Developers are interested in seeing verbose logs, because they want to 
see their bugs, not only fatal ones but also "silent ones" (e.g. 
compilers receiving duplicate/bogus CPPFLAGS)


There is only one group who is interested in "real silence":
Occasional random users, who are not able to understand/parse the verbosity.

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

Well, silencing to me is such kind of absurd, I am not interested in 
testing this.

Ralf