[OE-core] [PATCH] cmake: Displace VERBOSE setting

[Khem Raj]

On Thu, 2019-12-19 at 12:01 +0000, Ross Burton wrote:
> On 19/12/2019 08:52, André Draszik wrote:
> > Hi Khem,
> > 
> > On Wed, 2019-12-18 at 15:39 -0800, Khem Raj wrote:
> > > Setting VERBOSE always, while is fine on one hand for debugging,
> > > its
> > > coming at an expense of creating lots and lots of logs, e.g.
> > > qtwebkit
> > > compile logs alone with VERBOSE is 163MB, there are many other
> > > large
> > > packages which use cmake e.g. WPE, webkitgtk etc which are in
> > > same range
> > > with out this option on, the logs reduce to 861K and also speeds
> > > up
> > > build a notch
> > > 
> > > If user needs to enable this logs for targetted debugging
> > > debugging that
> > > could be added via
> > > 
> > > EXTRA_OECMAKE_BUILD += "--verbose"
> > > 
> > > in recipe
> > > 
> > > Signed-off-by: Khem Raj <raj.khem at gmail.com>
> > > Cc: Ross Burton <ross.burton at intel.com>
> > 
> > I don't agree with the reasoning to always disable this by default.
> > - it's
> > way too useful in general. I can't count the number of times it was
> > enough
> > to look at the log.do_compile to figure out something is wrong.
> > 
> > Now you have to recompile everything with this merged, and
> > something that
> > took 5 minutes to debug becomes an arduous task.
> > 
> > If the Webkit build is too verbose, you should make that specific
> > recipe
> > less verbose. E.g. you could always set
> > EXTRA_OECMAKE_BUILD, and just clear
> > it out in the webkit recipe.
> > 
> > Otherwise, based on the same reasoning, you should disable all
> > logs, not just
> > cmake logs: kernel, make output in general, bitbake logs. They all
> > take up space.
> > 
> > Seriously, those logs are useful, keeping in mind that often logs
> > are
> > collected on build-machines, and having easy access is a huge time-
> > saver.
> 
> Personally I agree with André.  We have verbose logs for autotools
> and 
> meson, so why is cmake special.  As this is a webkit-specific issue
> for 
> you, the neater fix would be to override this in webkit.
> 

perhaps there should be a global production mode and curb these logs
too. Since now we are citing webkit as an example solving it just for
webkit does'nt seem right option.

> Stepping back though, why are 163MB log files a problem?  Are you 
> archiving every log maybe?  If so then there's an argument to be
> made 
> for a global "logs should be verbose" toggle, that defaults to on
> but 
> you can set to off.  That way the kernel, autotools, etc can also
> follow 
> the same logic and *all* logs can be smaller.

I agree on this point. Although I wonder if 80% problems can be solved
by fixing cmake verbosity then that not a bad start. After this patch
one could infact enable it globally too by setting it in config
metadata, so we are just toggling defaults. 

> 
> Ross
>