I'm not a coder and so I don't build mozilla myself or try to debug but there have been many times that I gained useful information (for reporting bugs or just understanding what was happening) from the console. This is a request to maintain the console for at least a while longer. If public perception of the console s the real problem then eliminate it for that one build that becomes the Milestone but leave it in the nightlies. Thanks. Asa

could this be a command line switch? mozilla --with-console mozilla --without-console

For debugging, it's really important to be able to see what's going on somewhat behind the scenes, plus it's nice just to see what's going on when the browser is slow, especially at startup. Unless there's some deep dark technical reason for getting rid of it, I'd like to see the console back as well.

Bug 25542, "[FEATURE] Remove Windows application console", P1, M14, [PDT+], beta1, polish, is the bug that this one is worried about. In it law@netscape.com includes a patch that would use a MOZ_WINCONSOLE environment variable to control makefile.win to build with or without a console, so keeping the console in some builds or a parallel set of builds should be technically possible, if that patch is applied. Bug 26103, "[FEATURE] Add command line option to cause Windows console output to appear", M15, would create code to allow running "mozilla -console" from the command line, which would be a viable alternative to providing builds with and without a console for win32, if it gets done. Obviously, this would be easier on the official build system, and no real trouble for anyone who can make use of the console.

I think this is a dupe of Bug 26103, "[FEATURE] Add command line option to cause Windows console output to appear". The "average" user does not want the console stuff and thus the command line is the way to go. I won't mark it as a dupe yet, but think we should.

Calling this a dupe. It's not really, because I'd like to see the console turned on by default in the nightlies and only turned off for the Milestone releases. Since that probably isn't going to happen and the command line switch will satisfy me I'll go ahead and kill this bug. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 26103 ***

yup verified dupe