make --silent

[Lanoxx <lanoxx gmx net>]

Hi All,

I would like to hear some opinions about why the -s (--silent) option of 
make is not being used more often in projects? I just updated the 
configure.ac and Makefile.am files of a project I was working on and I 
made these two changes:

configure.ac:
m4_ifdef([AM_SILENT_RULES],[AM_SILENT_RULES([yes])])

Makefile.am:
MAKEFLAGS=-s

The make output before I made these changes was 53 lines long (but 
because of long lines it was wrapped into 115 lines on my screen), with 
huge blocks of text, that were difficult to understand. Warnings in the 
code were scrambled in between all these lines, and were difficult to be 
spotted. Then I added the line in configure.ac and the output reduced to 
41 lines which didn't need to be wrapped, but there were a lot of 
annoying lines like:

make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/.../Documents/Code/tilda/m4'

And then I added the line in Makefile.am and the output reduced to only 
28 (short) lines. In my opinion this has the clear advantage that I can 
now spot all the warnings and errors in the code very easily, see the 
example below.

I tried to ask in #gtk+ why they are using the SILENT_RULES makro, but 
are not using the silent make flag, and someone tried to explain to me, 
that this also silences warnings, but as can be seen below, it does not. 
I also dont see a real benefit in these make output which only seems to 
output which folders make is entering.

Maybe someone can give me more information about this?

Kind regards
Lanoxx


This shows the reduced output after adding the two lines:

Making all in po
Making all in m4
Making all in src
CC tilda-callback_func.o
CC tilda-configsys.o
CC tilda-eggaccelerators.o
CC tilda-key_converter.o
CC tilda-key_grabber.o
CC tilda-tilda.o
CC tilda-tilda_terminal.o
tilda_terminal.c: In function ‘start_shell’:
tilda_terminal.c:394:9: warning: ‘vte_terminal_fork_command’ is 
deprecated (declared at /usr/include/vte-0.0/vte/vtedeprecated.h:82) 
[-Wdeprecated-declarations]
tilda_terminal.c:422:5: warning: ‘vte_terminal_fork_command’ is 
deprecated (declared at /usr/include/vte-0.0/vte/vtedeprecated.h:82) 
[-Wdeprecated-declarations]
tilda_terminal.c: In function ‘tilda_term_config_defaults’:
tilda_terminal.c:531:5: warning: 
‘vte_terminal_set_font_from_string_full’ is deprecated (declared at 
/usr/include/vte-0.0/vte/vtedeprecated.h:79) [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
tilda_terminal.c: In function ‘button_press_cb’:
tilda_terminal.c:792:13: warning: ‘vte_terminal_get_padding’ is 
deprecated (declared at /usr/include/vte-0.0/vte/vtedeprecated.h:93) 
[-Wdeprecated-declarations]
CC tilda-tilda_window.o
CC tilda-tomboykeybinder.o
CC tilda-wizard.o
wizard.c: In function ‘show_invalid_keybinding_dialog’:
wizard.c:391:31: warning: format not a string literal and no format 
arguments [-Wformat-security]
wizard.c: In function ‘check_enable_antialiasing_toggled_cb’:
wizard.c:629:9: warning: ‘vte_terminal_set_font_from_string_full’ is 
deprecated (declared at /usr/include/vte-0.0/vte/vtedeprecated.h:79) 
[-Wdeprecated-declarations]
wizard.c: In function ‘button_font_font_set_cb’:
wizard.c:699:9: warning: ‘vte_terminal_set_font_from_string_full’ is 
deprecated (declared at /usr/include/vte-0.0/vte/vtedeprecated.h:79) 
[-Wdeprecated-declarations]
CC tilda-xerror.o
CCLD tilda