[pkg-wine-party] WoW64 implemented Re: Call for testing: automatically detect wine arch and WoW64

[Michael Gilbert]

On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 12:16 AM, Austin English <austinenglish at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 2, 2016 9:07 PM, "Michael Gilbert" <mgilbert at debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 12:00 AM, Austin English wrote:
>> > Yes,  in theory. In practice, many users don't report their
>> > distribution,
>> > and many developers ignore reports without the needed information.
>> >
>> > Why is it being overriden in the first place?
>>
>> Because when everything is working normally (the vast majority of the
>> time for most users) debug output is just noise.
>>
>> For similar reasons debian puts debugging symbols into separate
>> packages that the user has to explicitly decide to install.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Mike
>
> The vast majority of software that I run on Debian outputs noise, either to
> stdout, stderr, or ~/.xsession-errors. I don't see why wine should be a
> special case in that regard.

They all of course violate rule 11 of the unix  philosophy, but that's
a choice that the developers of those projects are free to make.

Wine is also free to make that choice, and on debian we choose to be a
bit more unixy than wine's default.

> If the output is blank or not attached,
> developer time is wasted doing several back and forth requests to get what's
> needed.  I think developer time is way more valuable than reducing noise in a
> terminal that most don't even notice (and users can override themselves,  if
> they want).

It sounds like you're arguing against dialog with users, and that's
another ok choice to be made, but probably not as useful as involving
them in the process of figuring their problem out.

> Debug symbols are a separate issue,  it's common to strip those out, and we
> can usually get some useful info without them installed. If needed, we ask
> users to install them.

Separate indeed, but quite analogous.  So just like debug symbols,
debug output is stripped.  If needed, users can be asked to set an
environment variable.  Setting an environment variable or installing a
package have similar complexity for users to figure out.

Best wishes,
Mike