Bug#905251: debian-policy: 4.9 paragraph is unclear (incompatibles statements)

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Clément Hermann wrote:

> 4.9 states:
>     The package build should be as verbose as reasonably possible.
>     This means that ``debian/rules`` should pass to the commands it
>     invokes options that cause them to produce maximally verbose
>     output.
>
> "as verbose as reasonably possible" seems incompatible with "maximally verbose
> output", at least in some cases (golang packages come to mind).
>
> Would it be possible to clarify this ?

Thanks for reporting.  My understanding from
https://bugs.debian.org/628515 is that the intention is

- print out compiler driver command lines, so that compiler errors are
  closely preceded with the command that produced them

- no need to print out command lines for tools like ld that are
  themselves invoked by the compiler driver, but do print out those
  command lines if you invoke them directly

I don't think verbosity for the sake of verbosity was ever a goal
here, so ideas for better wording would be very welcome.

In https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=628515;msg=30
I proposed wording along the lines of

	<tag>terse</tag>
	<item>
		Compiler and linker commands used to build the package
		should not be abbreviated in the log unless this
		tag is supplied.

		Packages built with <tt>cmake</tt>, autotools, or
		the Linux kernel build system can implement this by
		passing the parameters <tt>V=1</tt> and
		<tt>VERBOSE=1</tt> by default as arguments to
		<tt>make</tt> and omitting them when the terse tag is
		supplied.
	</item>

I am not sure why this suggestion got generalized to "as verbose as
reasonably possible" in the patch that replaced it.

Thanks and hope that helps,
Jonathan