Re: make -s

[Richard Hacker]

On Thursday 10 January 2008 21:30, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > If you want all tools silenced which are called by make, then I suggest
> > > to simply use
> > >   make >/dev/null || make
> >
> > well, we're after the automatic output going away, not intended output.
>
> So what's intended output?  
I think that the output should be similar to make -s. This is also not 
completely quiet, compiler warnings and the like are shown. It just means 
that the make commands should not be shown, whereas the output of the 
commands are very well. This reduces much of the 'make noise' and reduces the 
output to compiler warnings and errors. Quite honestly, I recently oversaw a 
compiler warning due to noise because I was on the command line and not in an 
editor.

> Should libtool parse their $TOOLFLAGS too?
Good point. No not really. Why should the tools parse their caller's flags? 
Quite frankly, make should be the one that calls the various tools with their 
respective --silent flag set, not the other way 'round, right?

> If all you want is libtool to go silent globally in your package then
> what about just
>   AC_SUBST([AM_LIBTOOLFLAGS], [--silent])
This is not the intention of the root of this discussion. Just as well as 
make >/dev/null 2>&1
is also not the point. 

If libtool complains, it should show it, whether it be stdout or stderr, it 
should all be shown. However, the ugly  ;)
'g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I. -Wall -g -O2 .....' 
that libtool calls is not really essential to the programmer when (s)he calls 
make -s. 

True, my editor should pick up these compiler warnings, but funnily enough, my 
vim allways ends up with a blank buffer after doing :make but not 
with ':make -s' when I use my patch to silence libtool.

So, here is my modest opinion. If I as a programmer call
*) 'make' on its own, it should show its commands as well as their output
*) 'make -s', it should not show the commands it calls, only the output of 
these.
However, libtool is responsible for parsing *make's *FLAGS

Cheers
- Richard