Re: make -s, how to make it quiet?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Joakim, Thomas,

* Joakim Tjernlund wrote on Sun, Sep 07, 2008 at 11:38:54PM CEST:
> On Sun, 2008-09-07 at 10:23 -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > On Sun, 7 Sep 2008, Joakim Tjernlund wrote:
> > 
> > > So I see that out builds uses automake 1.4-p6, maybe that is too old?

Yes, recent Automake versions do not have this particular rule be
verbose.

> > Perhaps Ralf could point out when (date and version) fixes were made to 
> > make the -s option work.

I have never claimed that Automake was completely fixed to make -s work
well.  The problem Joakim reported was fixed though:

| commit 3ff71ab7bc12233d01a016974157b12ce354a6b1
| Author: Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden>
| Date:   Sat Nov 8 14:03:35 2003 +0000
| 
|     * lib/am/depend2.am (?GENERIC?%EXT%.o, ?GENERIC?%EXT%.obj)
|     (?GENERIC?%EXT%.lo): Do not echo compile command manually, this
|     breaks `make -s'.  Instead, fold the compile command on two lines,
|     so that it take less space on the display.
|     Suggested by Karl Berry and William Fulton.

Some other rules still output stuff with 'make -s', but they tend to be
more rarely used.  Also, AFAICS all of them ensure to print a single
space at the start of each line, which could be used for an easy filter
(if your editor doesn't filter out warnings for you anyway).

Otherwise, 'make >/dev/null || make' is a quick help, if a bit
inefficient.

> > (All I recall at the moment is some long-ago discussion where this feature 
> > was being refused on the ground that it would make bug-reports harder to 
> > analyze ;-)

Your recollection does not match mine.  All I recall is that it was
refused to have Linux build-style output enabled by default; and all
patches floating around to enable Linux build-style output (whether
default or not) had some other problems, mostly they increased Makefile
size quite a bit.

The issue with making bugs harder to analyze, IIRC, was the enabling
of Linux build-style output by default: that hides the exact command
line that caused the error.  This makes for tedious extra round-trips
between the bug reporter and the maintainer.

> Funny, we want -s to find bugs!

Certainly.

> Anyhow, I am upgrading to newer automake but I get a ton of:
> ecn_ss/ecn_ppp_bl/Makefile.am:52: pppd_LDADD must be set with `=' before 
> using `+='
> ne/ecn_ss/ecn_ppp_bl/Makefile.am:57: relayd_LDADD must be set with `=' before 
> using `+='
> 
> Is there any way make newer automake accept those?

Well, these errors were added to help find typos in Makefile.am files.
You have to initialize the variables before adding to them:
  pppd_LDADD =
  pppd_LDADD += ...

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf