Re: Final redirection of texi output (issue 5650064)

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 12:47:22PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > My rule of thumb is that if I don't understand something easily,
> > then at least 50% of future lilypond contributors won't understand
> > it either.
> 
> eval is ugly and a little-travelled corner, and it might be necessary to
> write
...
> So I am really quite doubtful that we reduce
> complexity with this shell script which, after all, also needs to gets
> called with the correct path.

I'm not talking about reducing complexity by changing the code.
I'm talking about dumping a two-line

# eval calls the command $1 and redirects it to the log file $2;
# the &>!2 makes sure that both stderr and stdout are saved
# to that log file.

(if that's what's actually happening)

It takes fewer key presses and less time that we've spent
discussing this to add such a comment, yet it may save somebody an
hour or more down the road.  I think it's worth doing.

Sure, you could argue that anbody who doesn't understand that much
about shell scripting shouldn't be modifying our build scripts...
but history has shown that often the only people who have time to
work on our build scripts know very little about shell scripts
(and build systems in general).  The fact that we have Julien and
Phil working on it, with active reviews from you and Reinhold, is
a historical aberration.

- Graham