Re: Reducing verbosity of automake

[Duncan Gibson]

I wrote:
> > It might be a nice feature to add this to the autotools, but is it
> > really necessary? Why not follow the unix philosophy and write your
> > own filter (using sed, python, perl, whatever) that reduces the
> > verbose lines you don't want into something more managable?

address@hidden replied:
> You have to maintain it when any of that tools change their output
> format. If I were to develop such a thing, I'd rather try to tailor
> individual tools to suit my needs and consider maintaining three
> patches for autoconf, automake, and libtool. IMHO, it's The Ultimate
> Big Fat Smart Filter for All Known Output Types that doesn't fit the
> Unix tradition.

I'm afraid that I misinterpreted what the original poster wanted to be
a way of tidying output on a single development system, and not for all
variations of platforms where the build process would be run. The filter
would be a quick way of scratching his itch now, without having to wait
for a fully general system to be implemented in the autotools.

And Yes! if required on all build platforms such a filter would indeed
be The Ultimate Big Fat Smart Filter.

As it stands the autotools are already big fat smart filters, so maybe
it's not as much effort to implement a completely general solution that
would apply across platforms as it would appear at first sight.

Sorry for the confusion.

Cheers
Duncan