How to make automake less ugly? - makefile

Question

I recently learned how to use automake, and I'm somewhat annoyed that my compile commands went from a bunch of:
g++ -O2 -Wall -c fileName.cpp
To a bunch of:
depbase=`echo src/Unit.o | sed 's|[^/]*$|.deps/&|;s|\.o$||'`;\
g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I./src -g -O2 -MT src/Unit.o -MD -MP -MF $depbase.Tpo -c -o src/Unit.o src/Unit.cpp &&\
mv -f $depbase.Tpo $depbase.Po
Is there any way to clean this up? I can usually easily pick out warning messages, but now the wall of text to read though is 3x bigger and much weirder.
I know what my flags are, so making it just says "Compiling xxx.cpp" for each file would be perfect.

Answer 1

As of automake 1.11, you can greatly clean up the output using the silent-rules option. For example:
$ # First, make without silent rules
$ make
make all-am
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -g -O2 -MT foo.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/foo.Tpo -c -o foo.o foo.c
mv -f .deps/foo.Tpo .deps/foo.Po
/bin/sh ./libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc -g -O2 -o foo foo.o
libtool: link: gcc -g -O2 -o foo foo.o
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -g -O2 -MT bar.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/bar.Tpo -c -o bar.o bar.c
mv -f .deps/bar.Tpo .deps/bar.Po
/bin/sh ./libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc -g -O2 -o bar bar.o
libtool: link: gcc -g -O2 -o bar bar.o
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -g -O2 -MT baz.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/baz.Tpo -c -o baz.o baz.c
mv -f .deps/baz.Tpo .deps/baz.Po
/bin/sh ./libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc -g -O2 -o baz baz.o
libtool: link: gcc -g -O2 -o baz baz.o
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -g -O2 -MT qux.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/qux.Tpo -c -o qux.o qux.c
mv -f .deps/qux.Tpo .deps/qux.Po
/bin/sh ./libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc -g -O2 -o qux qux.o
libtool: link: gcc -g -O2 -o qux qux.o
$ # Now, use the silent rules
$ ./configure --enable-silent-rules > /dev/null
$ make clean all
rm -f foo bar baz qux
rm -rf .libs _libs
rm -f *.o
rm -f *.lo
make all-am
CC foo.o
CCLD foo
CC bar.o
CCLD bar
CC baz.o
CCLD baz
CC qux.o
CCLD qux
All that is needed is to add "silent-rules" to the invocation
of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE in configure.ac, and add the option
--enable-silent-rules when you invoke configure. (There
was much debate about requiring the option to be added
at configure time when this feature was added, and there
is an easy workaround to make it unnecessary.) Note that
with silent-rules enabled, you can still get verbose
output by running 'make V=1'

Answer 2

I did a bit of googling around as I am in the same boat, the autoconf tools do a nice job but it kind of wrecks your eyes when the text whizzes by and no way of knowing what was that about... here is a link to a blog that mentions a tool to do this and make it look like neater just like how you see a kernel build does the magic i.e.
Compiling foo.so
Linking foo.so
Here is another link to a tool that is called prettify automake.