Subject: Re: [boost] Official warnings policy?
From: Bo Persson (bop_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-04 17:05:13


Emil Dotchevski wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Vladimir Prus
> <vladimir_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> Emil Dotchevski wrote:
>>>> Unfortunately,
>>>> recent discussion left me with the impression that few folks
>>>> care.
>>>
>>> It is not about caring, once again the argument is about a
>>> personal preference: is the ugliness and decreased readability
>>> that is often required to silence a warning reasonable.
>>
>> I suggest we don't talk in the abstract. Once a specific set of
>> warning options, together with -Werror is in place, you can raise
>> your concerns
>> about any particular warning emitted by any particular compiler,
>> and hopefully, some per-warning-kind agreement can be reached.
>
> I agree that the only way warnings can be addressed effectively is
> to
> use -Werror. On the other hand, the idea that a warning is the same
> as
> an error challenges my world view. :)
>
> I understand why you say that we can't talk in the abstract. It's
> downright silly not to fix certain "good" warnings and we, as a
> community, definitely can agree on a reasonable definition of
> "good".
>
> However this will not address the issue at hand, which is that
> people
> who use higher warning levels will see tons of warnings. A better
> attitude is http://www.zlib.net/zlib_faq.html#faq35.
>

Yes, that's a good attitude. However, how are we going to be sure that
the code works, when the compiler says it might not?

The original example of a newer release pointing out that old type
punning is illegal, is really frightening.

Bo Persson