Re: error printing in reversed order ?

[David Malcolm <dmalcolm at redhat dot com>]

On Fri, 2016-10-07 at 15:08 -0400, nicolas bouillot wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Was wondering this could be a feature request ? Basically, this could
> be a GCC option to print compilation errors in a reversed order, i.e.
> the first being printed last. This is because when compiling from the
> terminal, it would avoid mouse scrolling all day in order to get the
> first error.
> 
> I'll be happy to write a feature request somewhere if this deserves
> it, but I do not know where and if this can be considered as a
> feature
> request.

There's an option
  -fmax-errors=
which can be set to limit the number of errors emitted.

It defaults to off.  The clang equivalent, -ferror-limit=, defaults to
20.

Maybe we should change -fmax-errors= to default to on, maybe 20?  This
ought to solve the "scrolling all day" problem you describe.

Also, our error message is "computerese":

  compilation terminated due to -fmax-errors=2.

clang's is better:

  fatal error: too many errors emitted, stopping now [-ferror-limit=]

but we could improve ours by showing the number after the option), and
say how to disable the limiter:

  fatal error: too many errors emitted, stopping now [-fmax-errors=2]
 
note: use -fmax-errors=0 to print all errors

or somesuch.

Thoughts?

Dave