Not a big deal… just to let you know it and thank you.

I even have a couple of custom build rules and it took me about 5 minutes to shut these bastards up too.

I think this is brilliant. Thanks.

configure.in is just the old name of configure.ac, see this page of the autoconf manual.

the obvious fact that everyone is trying to shut automake and libtool up is that the line noise 9 times out of 10 detracts from the ability to catch an error in the build and in the code. it’s as simple as that. solutions to the problem, until the autotools maintainers start integrating stuff like this is using common tools that do not require patching the hell out of automake and/or libtool. once everyone is using the same additions to the build system, with the same ways to restore verbosity level when needed, then the autotools can ship with a centralized solution — possibly using the same syntax.

that’s why shave is a good idea: same syntax, everywhere, to turn on (or off) verbosity, until automake 1.12 is out and everyone has transitioned to it.

@Zack, foo: I think you have a point here. You *obviously* need a way to get a verbose build when you get errors and/or when packaging. Now please consider:
* a workaround could be to export V=1 in your automated build environment; the hardcoded ‘make -s’ is neither portable nor a good solution, I’m fully aware of that.
* a distributed package can just disable shave, that’s up the to the maintainer,
* the default behaviour could be set to verbose, and then –enable-shave given to configure would turn shave on.
This still needs a bit of thinking though.

@blah: I’ve tested it with libtool 2.2 and it worked for me (at least at some point), could you point me to the project you are trying to “shave”? (the fix to the unmangling regexp I just pushed could help)

@foo: I agree with you, the real fix would be to patch automake. However patching automake on your system is just out of the question. You can’t require people to patch their own autotools when they want to autoreconf your project. This has to be mainlined. The fact that pretty-am has been around for 2 years and a half tends to prove it’s not as easy as it sounds.
That said the clean/install/… targets have an hardcoded ‘echo’ and handling those cases requires to patch automake. I might try to revive pretty-am, that’s not a promise!

As a side note, I do know that this problem has been around for years, that people have spend countless hours discussing it and that shave won’t solve the problem.