[New-bugs-announce] [issue24591] offer option to suppress "clean --all" output relating to nonexistent dirs

[alanf]

New submission from alanf:

The command "setup.py clean --all" writes out information about nonexistent directories that the script tried to clean but couldn't find. Example:

'build/bdist.linux-x86_64' does not exist -- can't clean it
'build/scripts-2.7' does not exist -- can't clean it

It would be better to suppress this output, or at least offer an option for suppressing it. This information serves no purpose to the user, except possibly to make him or her unnecessarily worried. (I know at least three developers on my team who wondered whether these lines indicated a problem when they tested our setup.py, which performs the equivalent of "clean --all" whenever "build" is run.) It's perfectly normal for these directories not to exist. The chance that you would have every possible such directory is close to zero.

There is a "quiet" option, but that's not what I want to use, since the other output issued by the command (that is, the removal of real directories) is informative.

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components: Distutils
messages: 246458
nosy: alanf, dstufft, eric.araujo
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: offer option to suppress "clean --all" output relating to nonexistent dirs
type: enhancement

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue24591>
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