[Python-Dev] distutils & stderr (original) (raw)

Michael Hudson mwh@python.net
01 Feb 2002 11:11:44 +0000

Greg Ward <gward@python.net> writes:

On 31 January 2002, Jeremy Hylton said: > I started a thread on similar issues on the distutils-sig mailing list > a week or two ago. There's agreement that output is a problem.

The amount of output, or the binary nature of control (total silence vs. total verbosity)? I knew that was a minor problem when I wrote that code initially, but had bigger fish to fry.

I'm thinking that verbose should range from about -2 (no output at all, even from commands if we can supress it) to about 2 (stupid amounts of output) with the default being 0, where we take our guide from what make outputs by default.

-v and -q would then be additive on the command line, so

python setup.py -q -v -v -q -q

would be an odd way of specifying "verbose==-1".

FWIW, my current thinking is that code that wants to be chatty should do something like this:

log(1, "installing foo.bar package") ... log(2, "copying foo/bar/baz.py to /usr/local/lib/python2.1/site-packages/foo/bar") The first number is the logging threshold, compared against a global verbosity level.

This sounds good.

In a strongly OO system like the Distutils, that should probably be spelled

log(N, msg) where the logging threshold is carried around in each object (or in some global object). This shouldn't be too hard to bolt onto the existing code -- ISTR that the verbose flag is readily available to every object in the system; just change it from a boolean to an integer and ensure that every log message goes through self.log(). Oh wait: most of the low-level worker code in the Distutils falls outside the main class hierarchy, so the verbose flag isn't quite so readily available; it gets passed in to a heck of a lot of functions. Crap.

There are a lot of calls in disutils that go

func(...,...,verbose=self.verbose, dry_run=self.dry_run);

Would it really be so bad to have a global "verbose" variable in, say, core? (same for dry_run, too).

Of course, what I would like is CL-style special variables, but ne'er mind that...

-- ARTHUR: Why are there three of you? LINTILLAS: Why is there only one of you? ARTHUR: Er... Could I have notice of that question? -- The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Episode 11