Re: AM_V_GEN - better docs

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Patrick, Miles,

* Miles Bader wrote on Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 09:00:55AM CET:
> Patrick Rutkowski <address@hidden> writes:
> > I don't get from that page how to apply to all my $(CC) build
> > commands, and I really want to quiet down this very messy "make"
> > output I now have.
*snip explanations*

Thanks.  A doc change to improve the situation here would be nice;
any volunteers?  For example, the silencing stuff could be part of
a new section somewhere between the "Miscellaneous" and the "Not
Enough" nodes, and it could treat `make -s', `make >/dev/null || make'
and other tricks as well as a discussion of silent-rules and maybe even
the tradeoffs mentioned in automake/lib/am/depend2.am.
(There is no need that a patch does all of this, just one step would
be nice already.)

> > The doc page there doesn't even suggest where to look to learn how
> > to apply it to your build.
> 
> It does, kinda, but maybe it doesn't go far enough;

Yes, but I agree that it's also still fairly obscure.
Especially the `make V=1' part probably cannot be documented
too prominently.

[...]

> Maybe it would be good to specify what the should be done to make it
> default to _on_, e.g.:
> 
>   "+ To enable silent-rules by default, specify an argument of "yes"
>      to AM_SILENT_RULES, i.e., add "AM_SILENT_RULES([yes])" to the
>      configure.ac file"
> 
> [I know that because somebody else posted it on this list recently :]

We've intentionally not documented that yet, because we weren't sure
whether it's a good idea having this functionality.  At least some
distro maintainers would be more happy to see less bug reports with too
little data because of this.

It might be time to reconsider this decision.

Cheers,
Ralf