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

Subject: Re: [boost] [warnings] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-08 16:04:53

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Stewart, Robert<Robert.Stewart_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Robert Ramey wrote:
>>
>> warnings vary with compilers. It's a huge amount of extra work
>> to eliminate all warnings in all compilers.  And in many cases
>> "fixing" warnings really amounts to "hiding" warnings (e.g.
>> using a cast) so "fixing" them is worse than leaving them.
>
> Using casts doesn't hide warnings so much as tell the compiler that you have examined the context and want it to convert something anyway.
>
> Leaving warnings is worse than using a cast because library users are left to wonder whether there are problems in the library, can't find their own warnings and errors among your warnings, and can't build when they prefer to treat warnings as errors.

Warnings may indicate a problem with your own code but in anyone
else's code they should be ignored.

Insisting to fix warnings is somewhat insulting to the author of the
library, too. It presumes that they did something unreasonable, when
in fact the warning itself may be unreasonable.

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