bug#27170: 26.0.50; Suggestion: Optionally send package build output to log file not *Messages*

[Philipp Stephani <p.stephani2@gmail.com>]

Am Do., 20. Aug. 2020 um 18:09 Uhr schrieb Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>:
>
> nljlistbox2@gmail.com (N. Jackson) writes:
>
> > When installing/updating packages a lot of messages are generated.
> > These clutter up the *Messages* buffer and make it hard to find
> > recent messages from before the package operation.
> >
> > Worse, they often cause truncation of the *Messages* buffer so
> > that recent messages from just before the package operation are
> > deleted.
>
> Yeah, that doesn't sound ideal...
>
> > A potential solution to this would be, optionally, to have the package
> > build output go to a log file instead of to the *Messages* buffer. Only
> > the summary messages (number of packages updated, success in updating
> > them etc.) need be written to *Messages*.
>
> I don't think we'd actually want to write this to a log file, but there
> could be a different log buffer.
>
> To implement that, we'd need to export Vmessages_buffer_name to Lisp
> Land (I think?), and we could then just rebind the variable to something
> else before doing the package builds.
>
> I think exporting the variable to Lisp Land sounds useful, in any case.
>
> Any opinions here?


I don't think we can rename the *Messages* buffer. We document that
its name is *Messages*, and there's certainly tons of code around that
assumes that.
If we want to change anything in this area, we'd better DTRT and
introduce a proper logging framework, with customizable log sources
and sinks (the *Messages* buffer being one of the sinks).