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Re: Debug output etc, cluttering the terminal



On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 12:09:42AM +0100, Neil Williams wrote:
> It's debug output, it is useful when debugging and you need the output,
> e.g. when fixing bugs and the user can just be asked to run the command
> from the terminal and post the output to help in debugging the bug
> report. Generally, the debug output for a particular release tends to
> reflect the issues which upstream were working on most intensively
> before that release and therefore can have a direct impact on the
> likelihood of new bugs or regressions in old bugs.

The Unix tradition is for programs to run silently unless there's a
problem.  Taking 64ms to complete some operation is not, in general, a
problem.

I have no problem with programs taking an environment variable or a
command line option in order to produce debugging output, but it
shouldn't be the default.  When you run these programs outside of a
terminal, the output goes to .xsession-errors.  Logging a lot of useless
debugging information makes finding actual problems in .xsession-errors
a lot less likely.

> It's not clutter. If you don't want to see it, run the command and
> redirect stderr.

It is clutter.  In my case, I opened a PDF in mutt.  mutt used okular
instead of evince (why, I'm not sure) and therefore the terminal in
which I run my mutt session now has KDE daemons screaming at me when I
update my system.  This is not desirable.

-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
+1 832 623 2791 | http://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only
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