Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > comp.lang.c > #154342

Re: "Why the C Language Will Never Stop You from Making Mistakes" by JeanHeyd Meneide

Show all headers | View raw

Poprocks <please@replytogroup.com> writes:

> On 2020-08-13, Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:
>
>> Am 13.08.20 um 01:15 schrieb Richard Damon:
>>
>>> I suspect part of the problem is that the category 'Warning' has a very
>>> big span of meaning.
>>>
>>> Some things are warning because they maybe should have been an error,
>>> but was downgraded to just a warning as some extension uses this.
>>>
>>> Some things are warning because they are very questionable codeing
>>> practices.  Things like if (x = y) where they also provide a alternate
>>> valid sequence that will silence the warning like if ((x=y))
>>>
>>> Maybe slightly less onnerous warnings of possible questionable behavior
>>> like declaring unused variables.
>>>
>>> And at the very bottom, stylistic warnings, things like bad indenting.
>>>
>>>
>>> If the category warning was split up so that you could make -Werror only
>>> generate an error on the higher levels of these, but still allow the
>>> lower levels, you could add new warnings, maybe started at the lower
>>> levels and see how well it works.
>>
>> Warnings, and what to do with them surely can be a problem.
>>
>> A warning could be anything from a constraint violation (i.e. invalid C
>> code) to some coding-style opinion of a compiler developer.
>>
>> And -Werror only makes it worse.  I remember multiple times the latest
>> release of GNU binutils not compiling with latest release of GCC, since
>> GCC had introduced some new warnings, and binutils had -Werror in its
>> build system (and AFAIR there was no easy way to rip it out of there).
>
> I experienced similar problems trying to build many GTK/GNOME-based
> applications after a major change in gcc caused new warnings to be
> generated.
>
> Although, in my view, this is more of an argument as to why projects
> should probably not include -Werror in their build scripts for
> production code, than some fault on the gcc developers' parts.

Again the problem is not -Werror but sets of options like -Wall
or -Wextra whose meaning changes over time and from environment
to environment.  Production compiles should include only specific
tests whose meaning remains static and does not change from
moment to moment.

Back to comp.lang.c | Previous | Next — Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Re: "Why the C Language Will Never Stop You from Making Mistakes" by JeanHeyd Meneide Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2020-09-01 07:37 -0700
  Re: "Why the C Language Will Never Stop You from Making Mistakes" by JeanHeyd Meneide David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2020-09-01 17:36 +0200

csiph-web