a contentious configure idea: --quiet

[Phil Edwards]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2004 at 03:53:54PM +1000, Ben Elliston wrote:
> At present, top-level configure.in has:
> 
> baseargs="$baseargs --program-transform-name='${gcc_transform_name}'"
> build_configargs="--cache-file=../config.cache --build=${build_alias} --host=${build_alias} ${baseargs}"
> host_configargs="--cache-file=./config.cache --build=${build_alias} --host=${host_alias} --target=${target_alias} ${extra_host_args} ${baseargs}"
> target_configargs=${baseargs}
> 
> When building the compiler with make -j, configure output is
> effectively useless: the messages are interleaved and fly by much too
> fast to read.  If configure ever fails, one always consults
> config.log, not the terminal output, for details.
> 
> In my local tree, I've added --quiet to `baseargs' above and it seems
> to be a useful change.  Is this something that might be universally
> accepted?  At the very least, adding --quiet to $target_configargs
> means that configuring the target libraries won't generate reams of
> noise on multilib targets.  Opinions?

That would be confusing for new[-ish] users, maybe.  I pass --quiet from
my build scripts, and it's far nicer than the reams of noise, but I can
also tell where a problem arose from looking at the messages that do get
produced, and interpolating.

Even if this change doesn't go in, we should definitely mention it on a list
of best practices for GCC hackers.  Passing --quiet to make is also nice,
because it means the only output on the screen are compiler diagnostics.
(And libtool's incessant repeating of its own invocation, but passing
--quiet to libtool turns that off.)

-- 
Behind everything some further thing is found, forever; thus the tree behind
the bird, stone beneath soil, the sun behind Urth.  Behind our efforts, let
there be found our efforts.
              - Ascian saying, as related by Loyal to the Group of Seventeen