Re: [Automake-ng] Activating support for silent-rules unconditionally?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> >
> And anyway, I wouldn't want to cater to these maintainer's attempt to take
> control away from the user.  OTOH, if all a maintainer wants is to have
> verbose output enabled by default, without preventing the user from using
> silent output if he thus prefers, all will be fine (in fact, verbose rules
> are and will remain the Automake provided default).

The naive user won't know anything about silent output.  Maintainers 
of packages which are configured to deliver silent output by default 
will then suffer with insufficient information provided in user bug 
reports, followed by an attempt at more discussion (often futile) to 
request building with verbosity enabled.  Users who understand build 
error messages but not the silent output mechanism will be frustrated 
that they can't debug their build.

Maintainers, package preparers, and the technically savvy, will know 
about how to enable silent output, so they will request it when they 
want it and so life will be grand.

This is why I continue to believe that traditional make verbose output 
should be the default.

We can only hope that maintainers do not assert a silent-only build.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/