[debhelper-devel] Bug#764461: debhelper: [PATCH] Add '--show-progress' option.

[James Hunt]

Package: debhelper
Version: 9.20140613ubuntu2
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

dh currently offers a '--no-act' option that will show the commands that
would be run. It also displays the name of the command that failed in
the event of error.

This patch adds a '--show-progress' option (along with
"DH_SHOW_PROGRESS" environment variable) that:

1) Displays the list (or plan) of commands that are going to be run (like '--no-act').
2) Adds two output tags for each dh_* command called, one is emitted
   before the command is run and the other is emitted after the command has
   completed successfully.

For example, if 'dh build --show-progress' is called for a program
whose tests fail, a 'grep ^dh build.log' will show:

  dh plan: dh_testdir
  dh plan: dh_auto_configure
  dh plan: dh_auto_build
  dh plan: dh_auto_test
  dh -> dh_testdir
  dh <- dh_testdir
  dh -> dh_auto_configure
  dh <- dh_auto_configure
  dh -> dh_auto_build
  dh <- dh_auto_build
  dh -> dh_auto_test
  dh_auto_test: make -j1 check returned exit code 2

This makes it clear which commands dh was planning to run ('dh plan:')
and which command failed (du_auto_test).

The '->' ("about to call") and '<-' ("called") output is not strictly
necessary to determine the failing step but are useful to watch build
progress. They could also be used by other tools to create expandable
"twisties" for example for a web version of a build log.

This idea was inspired by perusing the excellent FTBFS page at [1].
Currently, we can see easily which packages FTBFS, but the build
comprises multiple steps and having the ability to display and summarise
the precise stage of the build that is failing would be highly
desirable.

[1] - http://people.ubuntuwire.org/~wgrant/rebuild-ftbfs-test/test-rebuild-20140914-utopic.html

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers utopic-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'utopic-updates'), (500, 'utopic-security'), (500, 'utopic'), (100, 'utopic-backports')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
armhf

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-20-generic (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages debhelper depends on:
ii  binutils     2.24.51.20141001-1ubuntu2
ii  dh-apparmor  2.8.96~2652-0ubuntu7
ii  dpkg         1.17.13ubuntu1
ii  dpkg-dev     1.17.13ubuntu1
ii  file         1:5.19-1ubuntu1.1
ii  man-db       2.7.0.2-1
ii  perl         5.20.0-6
ii  po-debconf   1.0.16+nmu3

debhelper recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debhelper suggests:
ii  dh-make  1.20140617

-- no debconf information

-- 
Kind regards,

James
-- 
James Hunt
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