Command-line verbosity

We're having so much fun talking about command line options, I thought
I'd bring up another spiffy question.

When I do an update, CVS spits out a line for every file it changes.
If there are a lot of changes (which happens often), and there is a
conflict anywhere but in the last screenful of output, and I don't
*watch* the CVS command running, I end up trying to compile '>>>>>>'
somewhere.

Anytime I have to carefully grub through pages of output, most of
which is just "business as usual", I think the interface is borken.

(The output from the usual Unix build process is another great
example. Why can't it just be silent if all goes well, and otherwise
print out a full pathname, the command it was executing, and the error
message?)

Here are two possible solutions that occurred to me:

- (Radical.) CVS shouldn't print out the lines of the files it
  modifies unless you ask it to. Honestly, do you really read all of
  them and examine the changes? It should only report things that
  need attention, like conflicts.

- (Less Radical.) After telling you about each file it touched, CVS
  should print a blank line, and then reiterate the things which
  require attention.
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:12 2006