Emil Dotchevski wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Bo Persson <bop@gmb.dk> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Vladimir Prus <vladimir@codesourcery.com> 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
Emil Dotchevski wrote: the code works, when the compiler says it might not?
How we are going to be sure that the code works is not a simple question, but note that "fixing" a warning simply silences the compiler and (ideally) has no effect on the correctness of the code: if the code was buggy, it still is.
It is not true. Fixing a warning is supposed to fix it but not "fix" it. A warning fix may involve steps like: - fix bug in code or refactor correct code to improve quality - if code is perfectly valid, but just compiler overreacted, silent warning with appropriate annotation in code - refine compiler flags. - do not touch code, but comment/document the status and give reason why no action is to be taken Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net Charter Member of OSGeo, http://osgeo.org