Cactus build output is very verbose

[Erik Schnetter]

Cactus build output became very verbose with newer version of GNU make.

[Erik Schnetter]

This patch

$ git diff Makefile 
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index d0ddff55..0037a60d 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -49,6 +49,7 @@ endif
 # Make quietly unless told not to
 ifneq ($(shell echo $(strip $(VERBOSE)) | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'),yes)
 .SILENT:
+MAKEFLAGS += --silent
 endif

 # Stuff for parallel makes

corrects the problem.

[Roland Haas]

Can you provide a version of make that shows the effect (doesn’t have to be the first one) just so that there can be some check that this fixes all of the issue? I would have thought that .SILENT should still work (https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Special-Targets.html#index-_002eSILENT).

[Erik Schnetter]

I see this problem with

$ make --version
GNU Make 4.3
Built for x86_64-apple-darwin19.2.0

‌

[Roland Haas]

This is likely caused by this bugfix "[SV 54740] Ensure .SILE"T settings do not leak into sub-makes” mentioned in the release notes https://lwn.net/Articles/810071/ which is bug https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?54740 on savannah. Turns out we would have wanted the buggy behaviour. Erik’s fix restores the behaviour that we want (ie propagation to sub-makes) though it might be better to add “--silent” at the beginning since MAKEFLAGS usually looks this:

s -j2 --jobserver-auth=3,4 -- FOO=bar

in a sub-make from a .SILENT make with -j2 and FOO=bar passed on the command line.

[Roland Haas]

Oh never mind. Make is actually adding the “+=” option at the beginning. Probably same detail of how recursive variables work https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Appending.html . I have applied Erik’s fix as git hash d14d52bf "Cactus: propagate --silent option sub-makes" of cactus