[crossfire] Server console output

[Yann Chachkoff]

Yesterday, I made some tests with the recent CF server (the CVS one). As I wanted to get maximum verbosity, I checked the help, which contains the following:

Flags:
(...)
 -d          Turns on some debugging.
 +d          Turns off debugging (useful if server compiled with debugging
             as default).
(...)
 -log <file> Specifies which file to send output to.
             Only has meaning if -detach is specified.

First, I find rather strange that "+d" turns debugging *off* - that's rather counter-intuitive, given that "+" is traditionally attached to the idea of "adding", not "removing". But that's only a minor quibble.

On the other hand, the "log" option says that it only has meaning if -detach is specified, but that's not true - it seems that the -log option works in all cases.

Second, why is that the output is by default not stdout ? If I launch crossfire without any option from the command line, I'd expect it to give me some output on the console, but it doesn't appear to be the case. I don't even get the confirmation that the server is up and running. There is no obvious indication that the server output goes anywhere, and where.

So my question/issue here is twofold:

- Shouldn't either the -log option description be corrected or its behavior be changed (I'm not sure which one is "correct") ?
- Shouldn't the server launched from the command line send its output by default on stdout ? If not, what's the recommended way to achieve such a result ?