Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Portage einfo, elog... output format change

[Hank Leininger]

On 2021-09-28, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>>>> On Tue, 28 Sep 2021, Michał Górny wrote:
> > On Tue, 2021-09-28 at 18:26 +0200, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>         Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default
> >>         setting,
> >>         (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
> >>         (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
> >>
> >> So, maybe change einfo from [--] to [II]?
>
> > Nah, the whole point is to avoid letters since it's not very
> > important.
> > Alternatively to '[--]' I could make it look down '[..]' or maybe even
> > without eyes entirely '[  ]'.
>
> Yeah, anything but [--]. The version with the dots is nice.

I think any change from only-color would be an improvement; mgorny's
first version looks nice.

I can see why symmetry with Xorg EE, WW, etc. has an appeal but also the
downsides of a) since things don't actually line up 1:1 it could be
misleading to try; b) it's also somewhat language-biased.

Something a lot of tools have started doing is [?] prefixes to their
output; I don't know if there's even a semi-formal spec on it, but what
seems to me to map well would be:

[!] fatal error (die / eerror?)
[*] important but nonfatal (ewarn?)
[+] info, maybe memorable, but not harmful (elog?)
[.] status/verbose message (einfo?)

Could double that if preserving a 4-char-wide tag is preferred.

That doesn't cover all needed, like eqawarn, but there are more to
choose from.

It's unfortunate that many of these are regex metacharacters, making
slightly more (human) overhead when grepping, but we already have that
with the [] delimeters.

> > or maybe even without eyes entirely '[  ]'.

For no reason I can articulate, the empty one bugs me. I would get over
it though ;)

Thanks,

-- 

Hank Leininger <hlein@×××××××××.com>
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