Re: --debug documentation, output

[Patrice Dumas]

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:34:58AM -0700, Karl Berry wrote:
> It seems --debug is not documented at all, in the help message or the
> manual.  Can you tell me the meaning of the argument?  I tried perusing
> in the source but it didn't come quickly.

As far as I can remember there is no meaning at all.  As soon as it is
set, debug messages are printed.  I haven't put much thinking into the
debug output, in fact.  If I recall well, the tree is printed each time
there is a new line, which is quite verbose!

> Meanwhile, running
> makeinfo --dvi --debug=1 line.tex
> now outputs the entire tree and some 1600 lines of other output before
> getting to the execution.  That's ok, I guess, although it seems awfully

That's because the tree is parsed even if it is not used in any way,
just to do the error reporting.

> verbose without asking for maximum debugging.  But in any case, the
> execution of the subprogram is nearly impossible to find unless you know
> it's there, being the one line:
> texi2dvi|--dvi|--debug|line.tex
> after all the other stuff, and immediately followed by the texi2dvi
> expansions.
> 
> Can you make that debug output start with some indication, e.g.,
> 
> EXEC texi2dvi|--dvi|--debug|line.tex

Done.

-- 
Pat