Re: [Groff] Bug#69130: groff: should pay attention to its -E option

[Colin Watson]

[See http://bugs.debian.org/69130 - this was a while ago.]

On Tue, 15 Aug 2000 at 17:45:06 +0200, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> Branden Robinson wrote:
> > It would be nice if "Inhibit all error messages" actually did what
> > it said.
> 
> > cover:16: macro error: AE without AB
> > chapter01:193: macro error: automatically terminating display
> > ...
> 
> Warnings and error messages created by a macro package (in this case
> the ms macros) using the .tm request can't be suppressed by groff.  I
> doubt that such behaviour would be useful.

troff(1) does still say that -E's effect is "Inhibit all error
messages". How about this documentation change?

--- troff.man.orig      Mon Aug  6 11:24:33 2001
+++ troff.man   Mon Aug  6 11:33:36 2001
@@ -139,6 +139,8 @@
 .TP
 .B \-E
 Inhibit all error messages.
+Note that this cannot suppress messages output to standard error by
+macro packages.
 .TP
 .B \-z
 Suppress formatted output.

> I suggest to redirect stderr to a file.

Note that XFree86's build process, from which Branden was quoting,
already redirects stderr to a file and then greps through it for groff
warnings and errors.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  address@hidden