Turning off verbose output for mkmf

Hi all,

Is there a way to turn off verbose output in mkmf? Based on the code for 
the 'message' method in mkmf.rb it looks like this was the intent (it 
has the only reference to $VERBOSE that I see).

However, this still sends output to stdout:

require 'mkmf'
$VERBOSE = nil
have_func('gethostname')

If it's not possible then I'd like to suggest a way to disable this, 
perhaps via a global like $mkmf_verbose. My motivation for this is that 
I'd like to use some of these functions in my test suite. I'd rather not 
set $VERBOSE to nil, since that will disable warnings I might otherwise 
want to see.

Thanks,

Dan