Re: [PATCH] Ignore boilerplate logo from MSVC on stderr.

[Peter Rosin]

Den 2010-11-17 23:42 skrev Paul Eggert:
> On 11/17/10 14:23, Peter Rosin wrote:
>> As I'm curious, would you care to elaborate on what might fail?
> 
> For example, the N command might cause 'sed' to exit in some cases.
> Autoconf needs to be fairly conservative about unusual 'sed' commands
> such as 'N', as 'sed' implementations are not always bug-free.

I didn't recognize that one, so I looked it up in the limitations of
sed section of the manual and it's not listed there.  Perhaps it should
be?  But while doing that, I did find

        Unicos 9 sed loops endlessly on patterns like ‘.*\n.*’. 

which I somehow missed before.  Case closed, the fat lady has sung.

>> You have carefully omitted the part where I said that there are other
>> workarounds needed
> 
> No, actually, I was not careful about omitting that.  On the contrary,
> I wasn't thinking about that part at all.  But I'm not surprised to learn
> that a relatively-uncommon environment needs multiple workarounds, as that
> is typical for such environments.
> 
> Are you aware of the MPCL_SERVER_373011 environment variable?  It might
> make it a bit easier to work around the Microsoft logo problem.  See
> <http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=studies/msvc/cl/cl/options/nologo.htm>.

*I* don't have problems adding some -nologo workaround.  I have plenty
experience with the autotools/MSVC combination.  I'm worried about the
next guy giving up before discovering that success is right around the
corner.  All the warts make it look like it is pretty far fetched to
succeed.

This is a matter of expectations.  If you take some random proprietary
compiler on some random proprietary unix, you expect autotools to
cope.  You might need a little bit of elbow grease, but you expect to
be successful in the end.  I don't think this is the general expectation
when MSVC is involved.  Therefore, if there is (seemingly) low hanging
fruit like the issue under discussion that makes it look like someone
has actually made an effort, that can make a difference.  Autoconf
adding -g -- when -g is an unknown option -- is just the kind of thing
that gives you bad vibes.  This is all what *I* think of course, and may
not have much to do with what actually happens "out there".

Cheers,
Peter