Re: choosing the default for silent-rules

[Eric Blake]

Jim Meyering <jim <at> meyering.net> writes:

> >> What if a package maintainer wants to enable
> >> automake's silent-rules option by default?
> >
> > Then you should argue for this; see the arguments against it here:
> ...
> 
> Hi Ralf,
> 
> I think backwards compatibility is very important for some things,
> but this is more like meta-compatibility, and that is valuable
> only as long as it doesn't get in the way of progress.

For me, I thought it was pretty easy to just do:

$ echo enable_silent_rules=yes >> /usr/local/share/config.site

which changed the default for all packages that I compile using the default 
settings for --prefix, regardless of what the configure.ac itself wanted as the 
default, and without forcing my personal wishes on other clients of my package.

One thing that was brought up in the previous threads is that if you insist on 
changing coreutils to use undocumented means to change the default behavior, 
you should also provide documentation (in README) mentioning the use 
of './configure --disable-silent-rules' or 'make V=1' to restore the former 
behavior.  On the other hand, if I get around to modifying autoconf's 
install.texi to mention these newer options, on the grounds that they will 
become more popular as more packages update to newer autotools, then that would 
cover it for you via INSTALL.

-- 
Eric Blake