Re: [PATCH]: libtool-1.9f: Added option "quiet" - only errors and warnings go through, now

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Juergen,

Sorry for the late response.

* Juergen Leising wrote on Tue, Jul 19, 2005 at 11:02:34PM CEST:
> 
> I'd like to present a patch for libtool-1.9f, that introduces the
> "quiet" option, as, for example, in configure.ac:
> 
>                         LT_INIT([dlopen quiet])
> 
> Additionally, the patch adjusts the output behaviour of libtool a
> little bit to what is usual in make/automake. That means, if I type in "make
> -s", only warnings and errors are displayed, and any informational output,
> such as all those gcc options, is suppressed. 
> 
> This is quite useful, if you want/have to debug buggy software, because this 
> way 
> it is optically easier to focus on all the warnings about sloppy source code.
> 
> Opposedly to what is already contained in ltmain.sh, I do not
> make a difference between whether or not we have already compiled a pic 
> object.
> Instead, my "quiet" redirects every output, that would have been sent to 
> stdout, 
> to /dev/null. And everything, that is sent to stderr, keeps its way and still
> gets through to the screen, for instance.
*snip*
> I'm sure I am not the first one who has dealt with that problem, 
> as more and more people are unhappy with too much make output. 
> But I couldn't find a solution in google, and after all, writing that
> simple patch on my own was faster than searching for hours.

Well, you could just use
  make -s LIBTOOLFLAGS=--silent
(portable make version:
  LIBTOOLFLAGS=--silent make -e -s
or even
  LIBTOOLFLAGS=--silent; export LIBTOOLFLAGS; make -e -s
) which would not require the package author to change anything, or put
  LIBTOOLFLAGS = --silent
in the respective Makefile.am(s)
or even
  LIBTOOLFLAGS=--silent
  AC_SUBST(LIBTOOLFLAGS)
in configure.ac to have it in all Makefile's.

All of these possibilities are less intrusive than your patch, the first
one even allows the user the choice instead of relying on the compiler.
Maybe you can convince me why your patch would be better to use?

OTOH, there is a different, and IMHO orthogonal component: even with
--silent, libtool outputs a little bit of information (which I believe
your patch works on as well).  The question is: Should we add another 
option to be completely silent, or maybe just make --silent be
completely silent?  What do you/the others think?

As another note (_not_ meant to be flaming): I know two widely used
editors which are really good at filtering warning/error messages from
compilers, with minimal setup.

Cheers,
Ralf