Re: [boost] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?

Subject: Re: [boost] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-11 14:24:29

On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 3:06 AM, Brian Ravnsgaard Riis
<brian_at_[hidden]> wrote:
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> Daniel Hulme skrev:
>> On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 05:54:13AM -0700, Vinnie wrote:
>>> >From http://sqlite.org/testing.html#coverage
>>>
>>> "Static analysis means analyzing code at or before compile-time to
>>> check for correctness. Static analysis consists mostly of making sure
>>> SQLite compiles without warnings, even when all warnings are enabled.
>>
>>> We cannot call to mind a single problem in SQLite that was detected by
>>> static analysis that was not first seen by one of the other testing
>>> methods described above.
>>
>> It sounds like they're saying that no SQLite developer has ever made a
>> change (even locally) that resulted in the code failing to compile. It
>> sounds like they're saying the type-checker has never informed them of a
>> bug in their code - I know C's type system is hardly worthy of the name,
>> but still, these are pretty impressive claims. I don't think I can even
>> claim to have worked on a project for a day without the compiler
>> informing me of a problem in my code like the wrong number of *'s,
>> assigning a value to a variable of the wrong type, forgetting the
>> closing brace, or something similar; and I know I'm not a particularly
>> error-prone programmer.
>
> Actually, I believe they're claiming that they more heavily rely on a
> rather impressive unit- and regression testing scheme than on compiler
> warnings. No warning has ever informed them of a bug that their
> regression tests would not have caught.

If the "we want no warnings dammit" crowd main argument is "at my
company we have zero-warnings policy, we can't do anything about it"
then arguing whether or not any particular warning should be addressed
is pointless (OTOH, I'd bet that no company has zero-warnings policy
because some warnings can't be dealt with any other way but by
disabling them.)

Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode