Re: CVS version is not less verbose

[Karl Berry]

    It seems to me like it would be best if a minimal amount of information
    was displayed while running make, and a .log file 

That would be quite unusual in the Unix framework.  

    Most people ( like me ) that use the makefiles generated by automake,
    don't care much about what automake is doing to get the job done.

I agree.  The problem is also supporting make -s without further ado.
Thus, outputting each compile command on one line
 if $(COMPILE_COMMAND); then ...; else ...; fi
is a compromise.  In Emacs, with truncate-lines t, those long lines will
really only be one screen line.

The alternative would be to make the behavior be an automake option, but
adding such complexity is always good to avoid.

    The compile command compiler messages would be nice to see.

Definitely a requirement.