Re: Report to stdout like Linux kernel compilation does

[John Calcote]

Stefan,

I asked this very question a few years ago on this list.
Interestingly, my examples came not from the Linux kernel build
process, but from Windows builds, which use a similar output format. I
love this format because warnings and errors are obvious, and yet you
get enough output per file to tell you that something's going on. The
real benefit of this output format is that WARNINGS are obvious.
Often, in standard GNU/Unix/Linux build processes, warnings just zip
right by without much notice.

My question to the list was: How can I get Autotools builds to be
quiet, so I can see the warnings? The response that I got was that I
should just redirect stdout to /dev/null on the make command line.

For the next couple of years, I very was frustrated with this
response. I thought it was a cop-out for just not wanting to provide
the functionality. Then I realized that it was really the Unix way.
You want to see everything so that you know what's going on. When you
want to clean up the warnings (usually something done near the end of
a development cycle), you simply build with stdout redirected to
/dev/null when you run make a few times, and you'll see the warnings
appear, because they're output to STDERR, not STDOUT.

Now -- that said, I really see nothing wrong with my original request,
in the form of an Automake switch. It would be nice to be able to tell
Automake to build Makefiles that generate this sort of output.
Unfortunately, you and I aren't going to get much agreement, I think.

Perhaps, if you were to write a patch to Autoconf, providing a macro
or switch that generates such Makefiles... This also the GNU way. :)

Regards,
John

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Stefan Bienert
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi automakers,
>
>  probably this is an oftne asked and therefore annoying question ... but is
> there a simple way to get automake to produce a similar output as the Linux
> kernel makefiles?
>  Instead of this verbose confusing output like automake makefiles, the
> kernels make produces something like
>  [ compile object1 ]
>  [ compile object2 ]
>  ...
>  [ building module ]
>
>  and so on.
>  For me it would be nice to have something like a switch in the configure
> script to enable/ disbale verbose/ minimalistic information. E.g. first try
> with min. info, run into an error, therefore rerun with extensive info,
> search for the min. statemnt on which the error occured and voila!
>  Like this:
>  ./configure --disable-verbose
>  make
>  [ compile object1 ]
>  [ compile object2 ]
>  error on building object 2!
>
>  ./configure
>  make | grep
>  [ compile object1 ]
>  if gcc ... and so on
>  [ compile object2 ]
>  if gcc ... and so on
>  error...
>
>  I hope somebody can understand what I want to do.
>
>  greetings,
>
>  Stefan
>
>  --
>  Stefan Bienert
>  Zentrum fuer Bioinformatik
>  Universitaet Hamburg
>  Bundesstrasse 43
>  20146 Hamburg
>  Germany
>
>  Email: address@hidden
>  Phone:  +49 (40) 42838 7345
>  Fax:    +49 (40) 42838 7332
>
>
>