Xsession script append to ~/.xsession-errors

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Sun, Sep 24, 2006 at 05:31:50PM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 23, 2006 at 03:58:18PM -0700, Micah J. Cowan
> wrote:
> > I completely disagree with this. Having stderr go to
> > .xsession-errors is extremely helpful, particularly just
> > after you've seen a crash.
> 
> Absolutely, I did not say otherwise. What I object to is
> large quantities of verbose output when everything is
> normal. This actually detracts from the usefulness of using
> the stderr as a reporting device for failures, as the useful
> messages are drowned out in the useless ones.

Okay, apparently I completely misunderstood what you were suggesting.

As an alternative option to only showing the most critical information,
though, I'd also like to suggest a "verbosity level" flags along the
lines of the typical use for the "-v" switch.

> > Also, if you don't like to see output from GUI apps, why
> > would you launch them from the terminal? Why wouldn't you
> > use the app launcher, since that's what it's for?
> 
> I'm more familiar and comfortable with the terminal. I'm
> quite happy to see output from GUI apps, when it's useful to
> the end-user (e.g., "DEBUG: someprogram: user clicked on
> Foo" is _NOT_ useful to an end-user.)

Yeah. I'd have to agree with that. Only someone debugging the app could
possibly find that useful.

> > If you need to be able to launch it from the terminal,
> > it's very simple to redirect stdout and stderr to
> > /dev/null.  If that becomes tedious, set up an alias.
> 
> That stops me from seeing useful debugging messages.

Good point.

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer...
http://micah.cowan.name/