Re: RFC: Add public macros AC_LOG_CMD and AC_LOG_FILE.
On Mon, Jun 24, 2024, at 2:56 AM, Nick Bowler wrote:
> On 2024-06-23 22:23, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> I'm thinking of making AC_RUN_LOG, which has existed forever but is
>> undocumented, an official documented macro ...
>
> Yes, please!
>
> I will note that Autoconf has a lot of "run and log a command" internal
> macros with various comments of the form "doesn't work well" suggesting
> that this is a hard feature to get right.
... Wow, this is a bigger mess than I thought last night. Up to bad
quotation in third party macros, however, I *think* almost all of it
is obsolete and can be scrapped. Stay tuned.
> I think at the same time it would be worth documenting the AS_LINENO
> functionality, which is the main internal functionality of these
> macros that (unless you just goes ahead and use it) Autoconf users
> can't really replicate in their own logging.
I believe what you mean is you want _AS_ECHO_LOG to be promoted to a
documented and supported macro, and for AS_LINENO_PUSH and AS_LINENO_POP
also to be documented for external use. Is this correct? Did I miss
any other internal macros that ought to be available for external
use? I don't think we should tell people to be using $as_lineno directly,
is there some use case for it that isn't covered by existing macros?
> If you implement this, please explain in the manual what "labeled with
> /label/" really means, otherwise I'm left wondering why this macro
> exists when we can almost as easily write something like:
>
> { echo label; cat file; } >&AS_MESSAGE_LOG_FD
>
> Including example logfile output together with the example program
> might be sufficient.
Will do. The main point of the macro is that it does something a little
fancier than "cat file", so it's unambiguous where normal log output
resumes. Like the existing _AC_MSG_LOG_CONFTEST does:
configure: failed program was:
| /* confdefs.h */
| #define PACKAGE_NAME "lexlib-probe"
| #define PACKAGE_TARNAME "lexlib-probe"
| #define PACKAGE_VERSION "1"
| ... etc ...
configure: result: no
The "label" will go where _AC_MSG_LOG_CONFTEST prints "failed program was".
zw
Re: RFC: Add public macros AC_LOG_CMD and AC_LOG_FILE.
On 2024-06-24 10:04, Zack Weinberg wrote: > On Mon, Jun 24, 2024, at 2:56 AM, Nick Bowler wrote: >> I think at the same time it would be worth documenting the AS_LINENO >> functionality, which is the main internal functionality of these >> macros that (unless you just goes ahead and use it) Autoconf users >> can't really replicate in their own logging. > > I believe what you mean is you want _AS_ECHO_LOG to be promoted to a > documented and supported macro, and for AS_LINENO_PUSH and AS_LINENO_POP > also to be documented for external use. Is this correct? Did I miss > any other internal macros that ought to be available for external > use? > I don't think we should tell people to be using $as_lineno directly, > is there some use case for it that isn't covered by existing macros? On reflection, I think I may have had a mistaken understanding of the purpose of the as_lineno when I last looked at these macros. I assumed it was related to supporting shells without LINENO support but it seems it is not the case, so maybe nothing is actually needed. Perhaps a link from the (very short) description of AS_LINENO_PREPARE[1] to the description of LINENO[2] might have helped. That being said, something like AS_ECHO_LOG (with or without AS_LINENO_PUSH/POP) looks generally useful, although I don't have an immediate use case offhand besides implementing an AC_RUN_LOG workalike. [1] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.72/autoconf.html#index-AS_005fLINENO_005fPREPARE [2] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.72/autoconf.html#index-LINENO-1 [...] > Will do. The main point of the macro is that it does something a little > fancier than "cat file", so it's unambiguous where normal log output > resumes. Like the existing _AC_MSG_LOG_CONFTEST does: > > configure: failed program was: > | /* confdefs.h */ > | #define PACKAGE_NAME "lexlib-probe" > | #define PACKAGE_TARNAME "lexlib-probe" > | #define PACKAGE_VERSION "1" > | ... etc ... > configure: result: no > > The "label" will go where _AC_MSG_LOG_CONFTEST prints "failed program was". Looks great, this example output definitely helps to understand when one might want to use this macro. Cheers, Nick
