Reducing verbosity of automake

[Brendon Costa]

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Hi All,

        I have just recently started using automake and have been attempting to
port over a system that uses jam to now use automake. While doing this i
have come across a feature i seem unable to find within automake. I have
searched the mailing lists and the web for some information and noticed
that this issue has come up a few times, but I have been unable to find
a solution yet.

When compiling a project using: autoconf/automake/libtool, there is just
too much data being output to the screen when i run the make command. In
the jam system i am porting over if I was to issue the jam command, it
would print messages like:

C++ ./out/netbsd/debug/src/libs/System/unix/UnixUtils.o
C++ ./out/netbsd/debug/src/libs/System/unix/Utils.o
Archive ./out/netbsd/debug/src/libs/libADS_System.a
Ranlib ./out/netbsd/debug/src/libs/libADS_System.a
MkDir1 ./out/netbsd/debug/src/apps/boost_pointers
C++ ./out/netbsd/debug/src/apps/boost_pointers/main.o
LinkApplication boost_pointers


If one of the commands being executed sends anything to stderr like
warnings or errors the user will see them, but if all is working fine,
then you see just this clean looking summary of what is occurring in
order to build the system. I.e. the stdout from each command is being
piped to /dev/null but errors come through as normal.

The other thing it does is that if a command being executed returns an
error (i.e. failed to compile or link etc) then the jam system will
display the command line used. For example (Note edited the error
message and g++ command a little to make it more readable for this post):

C++ ./out/netbsd/debug/src/apps/test_inetaddress/main.o
main.cpp: In function `void RunServer(int)':
main.cpp:14: error: `x' undeclared (first use this function)
main.cpp:14: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
   for each function it appears in.)

    g++ -c -o main.o -I/home/bcosta/cvs/ADS/System/. -I. -Wall -ansi
- -pedantic -Wno-long-long main.cpp


I have been trying to find an option in automake to enable a this sort
of reporting and have not been successful. Some things have helped to
reduce the amount of output like passing the -s flag to make, and
sending the --silent flag to libtool, however they still do not produce
a very clean looking summary of the build progress that makes it easy to
spot warnings/errors.

Is there currently any feature like this available in automake? If not
how difficult would it be for someone who does not have much experience
yet with automake to add this sort of feature?



I also found one message in the mailing list archives that provided a
patch which achieved something like this, but i was unable to
successfully build the patched autoconf (i may look into this more later
if i decide to go down this path).

A link to that message can be found at:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2005-08/msg00030.html


Thanks,
Brendon.


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