From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Enrico Scholz To: nobody@gcc.gnu.org Cc: gcc-prs@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: bootstrap/3653: -fmessage-length=72 with g++ makes no sense Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 04:06:00 -0000 Message-id: <20010712110603.31522.qmail@sourceware.cygnus.com> X-SW-Source: 2001-07/msg00326.html List-Id: The following reply was made to PR bootstrap/3653; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Enrico Scholz To: Gabriel Dos Reis Cc: gcc-gnats@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: bootstrap/3653: -fmessage-length=72 with g++ makes no sense Date: 12 Jul 2001 13:02:21 +0200 Gabriel Dos Reis writes: > | 1. It breaks existing tools. E.g. Emacs awaits a ": > | " format and gets confused by the current behavior > > My personnal experience (yes, I write and compile my work under Emacs) > doesn't match your report. It just works fine. Emacs detects errors only if they have the format described above. The wrapped lines are plain text for it and won't be recognized as a part of diagnostic. Try to move the mouse over wrapped and unwrapped error-messages! The whole unwrapped message will be marked (which helps to increase readability), but only the first line of the wrapped one. Besides the misinterpretation by tools, the wrapped output is more difficulty to read by humans also: - the human brain can surveying grouped data faster than ungrouped one. The current wrapping destroys grouping. - the count of lines per errormessage is increased by a factor of 3 or more in most cases where templates are involved. Therefore messages belonging together (e.g. naming of possible candidates) can not be read at a glance and I have to scroll the compilation-buffer manually. > [... value for -fmessage-length=X ...] > We've through that debate over and over in the past. The default > value was what contented the majority which expressed their voices. > The exact value is configurable. I suggest a value of `0'. ;) ... at least if it is not a tty... > [...] > If you don't want the fonctionality, the documentation says you can > specify -fmessage-length=0 Older gcc do not know this option and will fail to compile. Therefore it does not exist a simple way to gain unwrapped messages with gcc. I think that backward-compatibility should be preserved in this case, because line-wrapping offers only a few advantages but has some drawbacks, Enrico