On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 10:05:17AM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: > Users may but developers will be looking for that debug output and > starting the program from the command line explicitly to be able to > collect it. (Filing a bug will usually result in the user being asked > to start the program from the command line too.)
Sure. And there is no reason why such a request could not include something along the lines of 'please run the application with the -d option so that it produces debug output'. Neil, nobody is disclaiming that debug output can be useful for a developer. But an application that has nothing useful to say should not say anything. The default for _any_ application should be to _not_ produce any output until there is a problem. This debugging output does cause problems: it slows down the application (doing 'cout' or 'printf' when they are not needed *does* take up some amount of CPU time, which becomes significant when the amount of output gets rather large), it generates huge .xsession-errors files that can cause problems for people with low quotas or for people who actually need the *useful* information in those files, and (in the case of KDE applications) it pollutes random unrelated terminals with output long after the application that was started on that terminal has exited, just because KDE applications like to start background daemons. There is no good reason why doing debugging output should be the *default*. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100815150857.gl27...@celtic.nixsys.be