Bug#628515: recommending verbose build logs

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Russ Allbery wrote:

> What should we do about cases where the upstream build system makes it
> difficult to override the verbosity?  In other words, is this a place
> where we should push Debian package maintainers to actually fix the
> upstream build system to make build logs verbose even if upstream doesn't
> support that as an option?  I'm thinking, for example, of some of djb's
> public domain software, where the compiler invocation is stored in a shell
> script

Good question.  IMHO yes, we should encourage packagers to help
upstream provide an option that makes the logs indicate how the
compiler was invoked, to make reproducing and debugging problems
easier.

In the kind of build system you're talking about, something like

	[ -z "$V" ] || set -x

at the top of the compiler invocation script could do the trick.