build: revert to pretty-print by default

[rvagg]

This essentially reverts 8656c26 which arose as a result of nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#3761, which says:

The practice of hiding command execution during the build process frustrates debugging and provides no meaningful benefit. A quick survey of existing GH issues shows several incidents in which submitters who provided build output were asked to take another lap with V=1. We should save everyone a lot of time -- including people who are debugging the build themselves in development or automated build environments -- and just make that behavior the default. If for some reason there is someone relying on not having any usable information about the build and wants the existing behavior, it could be preserved if a similar make variable is set (e.g., SILENT_BUILD=1 or similar).

This is what you get when you're not running verbose:

 CXX(target) /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/logging.o
CXX(target) /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/once.o
CXX(target) /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/platform/time.o
CXX(target) /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/platform/condition-variable.o

And this is what you get when you run verbose as we do now:

 g++ '-DV8_TARGET_ARCH_X64' '-DENABLE_DISASSEMBLER' '-DV8_I18N_SUPPORT' -I../deps/v8 -pthread -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -m64 -fno-strict-aliasing -m64 -fdata-sections -ffunction-sections -O3 -O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -std=gnu++0x -MMD -MF /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/.deps//home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/logging.o.d.raw -c -o /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/logging.o ../deps/v8/src/base/logging.cc
g++ '-DV8_TARGET_ARCH_X64' '-DENABLE_DISASSEMBLER' '-DV8_I18N_SUPPORT' -I../deps/v8 -pthread -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -m64 -fno-strict-aliasing -m64 -fdata-sections -ffunction-sections -O3 -O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -std=gnu++0x -MMD -MF /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/.deps//home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/once.o.d.raw -c -o /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/once.o ../deps/v8/src/base/once.cc
g++ '-DV8_TARGET_ARCH_X64' '-DENABLE_DISASSEMBLER' '-DV8_I18N_SUPPORT' -I../deps/v8 -pthread -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -m64 -fno-strict-aliasing -m64 -fdata-sections -ffunction-sections -O3 -O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -std=gnu++0x -MMD -MF /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/.deps//home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/platform/time.o.d.raw -c -o /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/platform/time.o ../deps/v8/src/base/platform/time.cc
g++ '-DV8_TARGET_ARCH_X64' '-DENABLE_DISASSEMBLER' '-DV8_I18N_SUPPORT' -I../deps/v8 -pthread -Wall -Wextra -Wno-unused-parameter -m64 -fno-strict-aliasing -m64 -fdata-sections -ffunction-sections -O3 -O3 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -std=gnu++0x -MMD -MF /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/.deps//home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/platform/condition-variable.o.d.raw -c -o /home/rvagg/git/iojs/io.js/out/Release/obj.target/v8_libbase/deps/v8/src/base/platform/condition-variable.o ../deps/v8/src/base/platform/condition-variable.cc

I take the point of the original issue poster and I wasn't around in core before we turned V=1 on so I can't speak to the experience of having to go back and ask people to turn it on in order to get bug reports so I'd be happy to hear from more experienced folks, like @bnoordhuis and @indutny.

Here's the case for going back to a cleaner build though:

1. Our builds have double the number of steps than they did when they were first made silent (833 then vs 1798 now), they have become extremely noisy for everyone
2. I don't see people being asked to provide snippets of their build output these days, I suspect that we've reached a new level of maturity where our problems are elsewhere
3. Further to point 2, we have very broad CI support, our CI system covers all of our primary targets and most of our secondary, it's really only the exotic cases where we're likely to run into problems where compiler options that users are using are interesting.
4. It's slowing down Jenkins (I believe), all of this output gets stored for each run and it's rarely looked it. It's at least slowing down loading of console output from Jenkins (I'm regularly doing this and the majority is this compile output, not even the test output!).
5. It's hiding compiler warnings, they get hidden in the output and we mostly ignore them.
6. It's pretty and shiny, and who doesn't love a bit of pretty and shiny?

[trevnorris]

+1 for anything that helps us see compiler warnings.

[bnoordhuis]

I take the point of the original issue poster and I wasn't around in core before we turned V=1 on so I can't speak to the experience of having to go back and ask people to turn it on in order to get bug reports so I'd be happy to hear from more experienced folks, like @bnoordhuis and @indutny.

I thought the verbosity was annoying at first but it did streamline bug reporting.

I don't see people being asked to provide snippets of their build output these days, I suspect that we've reached a new level of maturity where our problems are elsewhere

I still do from time to time. For example, there was a mips build issue last week that was caused by conflicting compiler flags.

It's hiding compiler warnings, they get hidden in the output and we mostly ignore them.

Yes, that's a legitimate drawback.

Can I suggest doing export V= on the CI machines but keep V=1 the default?

[addaleax]

It's hiding compiler warnings, they get hidden in the output and we mostly ignore them.

We do occasionally receive bug reports from people having legitimate worries about compiler warnings.

[gibfahn]

So the difference is whether you get the CC/CXX binary being run, and whether you get the compiler flags used? Am I right in thinking that these are pretty much the same for most of the compiler commands? In which case it might be possible to print them once at the top, and then not have them repeat for every command.

I'm certainly a fan of the ninja build output, which is pretty spartan except for the compiler warnings.

[bnoordhuis]

Am I right in thinking that these are pretty much the same for most of the compiler commands?

Not really, I'm afraid. Dependencies each have their own set of flags and sometimes even different flags for different files.

[gibfahn]

Not really, I'm afraid.

😭

Can I suggest doing export V= on the CI machines but keep V=1 the default?

We could do this and also explain that you can do make -j4 V= in the docs, which should make things easier for people who read the docs.

[jasnell]

ping. any update on this?

[fhinkel]

There hasn't been any activity here. I'm closing this. Feel free to reopen if I closed this in error.