Re: silent installs

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 01/29/2010 02:05 PM, Steffen Dettmer wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Ralf Corsepius<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > Silent make rules are harmful:
> > - Bogus defines [............]
> > typically do not show up as compiler warnings or errors.
>
> Could you please explain that?

Example: Compling a package under linux

configure --prefix=/usr ....
...
gcc -DCONFDIR="/foo/bar" -DIRIX ...

Using silent make rules you will not notice the bogus -DCONFDIR at 
compilation time. If you're providing package binaries your users will 
likely encounter run-time errors.

Whether -DIRIX will cause problems would depend on a package's details.
It's not unlikely compilation will succeed but use source-code which 
wasn't intended to be used under Linux.

> > Silent building is only appropriate when a user knows what he is doing and
> > when explicitly asking of it.
>
> typing "make -s" is explicitly asking, isn't it?

With gnu make, yes. But is it portable to other makes?

Ralf