Bug 140879 (console-noise) - [META] Console noise
Summary: [META] Console noise
Status: NEW
Alias: console-noise
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
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Depends on: 138705 140883 142244 143555 144113 144114 145175 146231 150432 150702 152050 152279 152728 152729 152730 152731 152745 152746 152748 152749 152750 152751 152752 152753 152755 152756 152757 152759 152760 152762 152763 152764 152765 152766 152768 152771 152781 152786 152791 152796 152797 152798 152816 152819 152820 152821 152822 152823 152824 152825 159194 140875 140876 140878 140881 140884 144115 145171 145173 145174 146228 146229 146230 150676 150687 152281 152282 152439 152747 152754 152758 152761 153814
Blocks:
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Reported: 2021-03-08 12:14 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2024-01-30 01:21 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2021-03-08 12:14:48 UTC
When we start a daily build of Libreoffice, we get quite a few messages logged to the console. Some of them indicate bugs in the code, in particular attempts to do things which don't need doing (and thus fail); some of them warn us of a state of affairs which is actually fine and should not merit a warning; etc.

The combined effect is a lot of "noise" which tends to hide those log lines which indicate objectively problematic occurrences on our system.

This meta bug is intended to track bugs which effect this state of affairs - whether they're bugs merely regarding excessive logging, or other bugs which also result in log messages.
Comment 1 Mike Kaganski 2021-03-08 14:23:25 UTC
The warnings that are emitted by daily builds are emitted by *debug* builds of the program. As such, they are targeted at developers working on the code, and reflect what a specific developer decided useful to output; the data there is usually quite enough for a person looking for a problem to see the problem; however, sometimes it is indeed obsolete. There are commits now and then that move some warnings to info, or remove warnings; and at the same time, new warnings may be introduced.

It seems ... not useful to look at those warnings from a user PoV, where "either actual error is shown, or nothing is shown at all". The shown bits, which may seem useless now and at this input, turn useful when another problematic file is analyzed. Release builds do not have these warnings at all.

However, I don't have a strong opinion on this.
Comment 2 Eyal Rozenberg 2021-03-08 15:11:30 UTC
(In reply to Mike Kaganski from comment #1)
> It seems ... not useful to look at those warnings from a user PoV, where
> "either actual error is shown, or nothing is shown at all". The shown bits,
> which may seem useless now and at this input, turn useful when another
> problematic file is analyzed. Release builds do not have these warnings at
> all.

I basically agree. So, just to emphasize - the intention is not to encourage any bugs saying "don't print this message", but rather mostly bugs about resolving the issues which cause the message to be printed. 

An exception to my agreement is that console output is seen not just by the developer, but by QA people, early adopter users, and other developers. For their sake, it's important that messages be clear enough for them to understand whether they should be looking into something or not


(And indeed, if you look at the 6 dependent bugs, you'll see that there's no "just stop printing this" bugs.)
Comment 3 Michael Warner 2021-12-15 13:23:41 UTC
I changed component to LibreOffice, because this issue is not specific to Base.