What is the reason for gb_Helper_abbreviate_dirs?

[Stephan Bergmann]

On 02/07/2015 11:37 AM, Bjoern Michaelsen wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 04, 2015 at 03:22:04PM +0100, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
>> For another, it makes it more tedious to copy/modify/paste "make"
>> (w/o -s) output for some little one-off things like asking the
>> compiler to produce -S instead of -c output for some .cxx.
>
> How so exactly? I remember from when I started playing with the build system
> doing that more that likely anybody else did, and both having shorter
> commandlines and not having to type a full path to e.g. $W all the time was
> more of a feature than a bug for me.

Unless you deliberately want to "poison" your shell with S, W, etc. 
variables, it makes it harder to just copy part of a recipe line.  (I 
kind of get around that by including the setting of the variables in 
what I copy, and including the whole command line in parentheses.)

> Anyways, YMMV -- so no opposing this, as having less magic is generally good.
> Lets see if without abbreviated dirs, the verbose build logs of release package
> builds will break my or somebody elses build infra by being ten times(?) as
> big. ;)

I'll give it a try on a "fat" Windows build when I find time.