Re: verbosity

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Jason Kraftcheck wrote on Thu, Jan 18, 2007 at 07:10:19PM CET:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> >
> > <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2006-08/msg00024.html>
> 
> I don't understand why this is such a controversial issue.

Then
- you must not have had to deal with Makefile.in files several megabytes
  in size,
- maybe you haven't had to deal much with bad user bug reports that
  provide far too little information to be valuable.

I don't know how many times I've been wanting to stand in front of bug
reporters and literally slap them with
<http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html>
until it comes out of their nose, after the second mail of mine only
asking for more details.

But then again, most if not all developers I know have an editor that
does near-perfect postprocessing of compiler warning/error messages.
Heck, where missing, I've even sent patches to the Vim maintainer.

(Yes, some of this reasoning is about this controversy in general, not
applicable in the above case; but it's not me you should convince about
Tommy's patch.)

> Just have
> automake prefix all commands in rules that are not already prefixed with @
> or - with $(PREFIX) (or some other variable.)  Have default for PREFIX be
> empty so the current behavior is unchanged.  If someone wants to change
> the output, they can redefine it with something like PREFIX="@echo
> 'building $@ ...'; ".  Minimal makefile 'bloat', no change to the default
> behavior, and the flexibility for the output to be whatever is desired.

I think the patch Tommy suggested was pretty similar to this
description, but it did not address the concerns raised.

Cheers,
Ralf