Re: GOP-PROP 5: build system output (final)

[Phil Holmes]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Reinhold Kainhofer" <address@hidden>

[snip very well argued case]

Reinhold,

I know you have many 10s of times more experience with lilypond than I do, 
and I agree with 99% of what you say...  But...

The truth is, no-one pays any attention to warnings during the build 
process.  If I grep the output of make for the word "warning" I get 380 
lines in the middle of 37,000 other lines of output.  Most of these warnings 
come from other parts of the build system, but no-one's looking at them. 
There are nine warnings from the code compiler:

/flower/file-name.cc:100: warning: ignoring return value of 'char* 
getcwd(char*, size_t)', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
/lily/glissando-engraver.cc:124: warning: comparison between signed and 
unsigned integer expressions
/lily/lily-parser-scheme.cc:85: warning: ignoring return value of 'int 
chdir(const char*)', declared with attribute warn_unused_result
/lily/lyric-combine-music-iterator.cc:224: warning: unused parameter 'sev'
/lily/skyline.cc:395: warning: unused parameter 'a'
/lily/lexer.ll:634: warning, rule cannot be matched
/lily/lexer.ll:637: warning, rule cannot be matched
/lily/lexer.ll:706: warning, -s option given but default rule can be matched
out/parser.cc:2392: warning: conversion to 'short int' from 'int' may alter 
its value

If warnings are there to prevent code errors, why have these not been fixed?

In practice, displaying warnings on the console is a waste.  It's really 
far, far better to put them in a file, where concerned individuals can grep 
the file, open it in an editor and view it, etc.  I would have got nowhere 
understanding the build system unless I routinely redirected the build 
output to file.

That said, I am absolutely and completely in agreement with you that, should 
there be a build error, it should be immediately apparent that it has failed 
and what caused it.

Can I take this opportunity to request specific feedback on viewing the 
output of make?  It's trivially simple to turn off with make -s, so it would 
be my proposal not to try to hide it in any other way, but to ask anyone who 
wished to lose it to use the -s option.  Does that sound sensible?

--
Phil Holmes