Re: Really crummy error messages, was Re: Ada files now checked in

[Phil Edwards <pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com>]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2001 at 04:31:33PM +1000, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> One drawback with this approach as you have outlined it is that
> beginners, who are the ones that most need the verbose error messages,
> don't know to use the `--verbose-errors' option.  To alleviate this
> problem, at the end of all the compilation errors, the Mercury compiler
> outputs the following additional message:
> 
> 	Recompile with `--verbose-errors' for more information.

I'd probably get just as annoyed seeing that message repeatedly as I
would seeing the "(each doohickey is reported only once for each flurble)"
message that started this subthread.  :-)

This is one of those few areas where I feel the compiler should take
parameters from an environment variable.  Maybe leave "beginner mode"
messages on by default, but allow others of us to set

    export GCC_DIAGNOSTICS=nobeginner,spaced_out,ANSI_color_highlights

to turn off the extra messages, and also do indenting like

    http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/libstdc++/2000-q2/msg00318.html

with colors, etc.

Maybe only the driver would check for environment variables, and then insert
the appropriate -fdiagnostic options into the command line for the compiler.


Phil

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