Re: GNU M4 1.4.13 released (stable)

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 1 Apr 2009, Eric Blake wrote:
> At this point, it seems like it might be a good idea for the use of
> 'automake --silent-rules' to add a configure option that sets the default
> state of the V make variable for a user's taste.  That is, you would still
> have to request automake to issue silent-rules support, but once a project
> has silent rule support, the user can still have the flexibility to choose
> the default verbosity level that they are comfortable with.  Something
> like './configure --disable-silent-rules' to request the V=1 behavior?

This requires that the user make a change to what they have already 
been doing.  Software based on autotools should be benefiting from the 
long-term stable build environment and should not be requiring the 
user to notice that a change is required in order to obtain the 
behavior they are used to.  It is not always possible for the user to 
make the change since the package may be built via OS-specific wrapper 
build scripts and so they have no way to enable the prior verbose 
builds.  The basic principle of "least surprise" applies here.

At the moment there is not an obvious way to determine if a change is 
required other than to type 'make' and see what happens.  If the build 
will take several hours and the user wants to see all the build steps, 
then the user would need to ^C the build and start over with new 
options (possibly doing 'make clean' first), or else already be aware 
of the special build syntax and supply it for every build from this 
time forward.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/