Re: [boost] [new Warnings policy] MSC4180 ontheMaintenance Guidelines

Subject: Re: [boost] [new Warnings policy] MSC4180 ontheMaintenance Guidelines
From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-20 13:47:13

Stewart, Robert wrote:
> Peter Dimov wrote:
>>
>> (Apologies of losing track of the quoting.)
>>
>>>> Warnings often indicate real problems.
>>
>> A "warning policy" is only needed for warnings that do not
>> indicate real problems.
>
> That's a naive position.

Thanks.

> If one is in the habit of ignoring warnings (suppressed or otherwise), one 
> may miss the error.  Warnings can alert the developer to a problem before 
> anyone notices it in real use.  Consequently, the warnings policy is to 
> build at a reasonably high warning level and to emit none.

This is a reasonable warnings policy for a company, or a project, but is not 
a Boost warnings policy. The Boost warnings policy needs to

- state whether a warning is considered a bug,
- state whether and how a developer should deal with reports (and trac 
tickets) that a warning is emitted,
- ensure that warnings are seen by developers,
- ensure that a warning, once eliminated, stays eliminated,
- ensure that warnings are not introduced into other developers's code.

Note that if you replace "warning" with "bug", the items above no longer 
make sense - that's because we already have a policy for bugs and don't need 
another one.