Re: [PATCH 1/3] makefile: add silent rules

[Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>]

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 02:10:36AM +0200, Luca Barbato wrote:
> > I remember there were several advantages to standard full output, so the
> > verdict was that *if* they're added, they get disabled by default.
> 
> It is disabled by default.

There was never any agreement to add this stuff, just a consensus
that, if it does get added despite the overwhelming opinions against
it, it be off-by-default.

> > While this patch does respect that, I'd like to know whether there's a
> > better reason for the added ugliness than "Some folks don't like to see
> > what's happening"...
> 
> It is faster, you see the warnings w/out useless clutter. You do not
> care about seeing what the clean target is doing most of the times and such.

The speed issue is the only somewhat compelling one; musl's build does
take several times longer on slow terminals merely because the
terminal sucks. It's really sad when it takes more time to display 2-3
lines of text than to compile and assemble a whole .c file...

> > Patch 3/3 is the most valuable part of the series, I think.
> > I can see merging that, and patch 2/3 is trivial.
> 
> Indeed, but since I did the work and since at least for few people is
> useful I tried to rebase it.

I'm still undecided. My leaning is towards simplicity in the build
system. This sort of feature really belongs in make itself, not
re-implemented in every makefile (i.e. make could just print something
like "$< -> $@" for every rule it runs and suppress the printing of
the commands).

Rich