Re: silent installs

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 01/29/2010 03:42 PM, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>     On 01/29/2010 02:05 PM, Steffen Dettmer wrote:
>     >  On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 9:21 AM, Ralf Corsepius<address@hidden>   wrote:
>     >>  Silent make rules are harmful:
>     >>  - Bogus defines [............]
>     >>  typically do not show up as compiler warnings or errors.
>     >
>     >  Could you please explain that?
>
>     Example: Compling a package under linux
>
> The system that you are refering to as `Linux' is really called GNU
> and was started by the GNU projet in 1984, many people don't know the
> GNU project and what it does.  You can help us spread that knowledge
> by talking about GNU when you talk about GNU-powered software
> distributions (a la GNU/Linux instead of just Linux).  See
> http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html for more details.

Please take your boring religious pedantery elsewhere - Rest assured I 
know the difference and consider your remark to be inappropriate.

>     configure --prefix=/usr ....
>     ...
>     gcc -DCONFDIR="/foo/bar" -DIRIX ...
>
>     Using silent make rules you will not notice the bogus -DCONFDIR at
>     compilation time.
>
> If these macros where put into a header file, which is the usual case,
There is nothing "usual" - Actually, specifying paths via defines is 
very common practice, esp. in automake (Cf. the section on locale in 
automake.info; make time vs. configuration time variable expansion).

> they would not been seen either.  The whole argument that silent
> output from make is `harmful' is really not true;  very few people
> actually read it  and to help a user you will always want to ask for
> config.log which give you all the required information; including any
> compiler flags

Feel free to use silent make rules - I guarantee you, it will bite you 
sooner or later.

EOT - I am not interested in continuing this thread.

Ralf

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Registered Linux User #26