Re: silent-rules

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 10/14/2009 07:05 AM, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> [ dropping autoconf@ ]
>
> * Ralf Corsepius wrote on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 05:20:30PM CEST:
> > On 10/13/2009 04:49 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> > > On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > > > The problem is verifying "correctness of building" packages in batches.
> > > >
> > > > i.e. to monitor/inspect CFLAGS, CPPFLAGS, LDFLAGS etc. in
> > > > compiler calls etc. for correctness
> > > >
> > > > (NB: A package, which compiles without warning doesn't mean it
> > > > is being built correctly.)
> > > >
> > > > > What work does it cause except for using --disable-silent-rules at
> > > > > configure time or V=1 at make time?
> > > > Exactly this is the problem.
>
> I still fail to understand.  What problem do you have with either
>    echo export V=1>>  ~/.bashrc
>
> or
>    echo enable_silent_rules=no>>  ${CONFIG_SITE-/usr/local/share/config.site}
>
> once on your distro build daemon and be done with it?
OK, I realize you don't have much clues about building rpms.

Wrt. question: Nope, this is not possible, because V is a much too 
general variable name to set it globally.
The likelihood it will clash with another V amongst the 1000s of 
packages Fedora consists of is simply too high.

automake should have used a name-space guarded variable, instead or not 
be using any variable at all but be relying on a configure-time option 
(--enable-verbose or similar) only.

> This is still a serious question, and I haven't seen anything in your
> replies that answers it.  Yes, it may be pushing around distro
> maintainers, but it's more of a gentle nudge than anything else if you
> ask me.

> Or is it that you need to teach bug reporters to do this?
That's what we currently are doing:

You (automake) have pushed us around to tell them:
"Add V=1" to prevent automake from producing it's silent build.logs.

I guess, I don't have to emphasize that this fuels the already very 
vocal community which is agitating against automake.

> Complaining alone won't change the situation, unless we also find ways
> to improve things.  Going back isn't an option, for several reasons,
> so let's see how to best go forward.
IMO, removing AM_SILENT is the only option. It's poorly implemented 
("V") kid-stuff too cater people who have little clues about the 
pitfalls of building.

> > > The problem isn't the support for silent rules.  The problem is
> > > that some packages are enabling it by default
> > Indeed. What makes the situation worse is some upstreams shipping
> > "common" aclocal-macros which enable it by default. This cause quite
> > some amount of surprises when analysing buildlogs of packages which
> > for whatever reasons run autoreconf/autogen.sh.
>
> Well, isn't that worthy of a bug report to that upstream then?
Well, people doing so are from the club of "people having little clues" 
about the pitfalls lurking in building.

IMO, you should remove AM_SILENT from automake and the case will be closed.

Ralf