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

Subject: Re: [boost] [warnings] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?
From: Vladimir Prus (vladimir_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-09 02:13:45

Emil Dotchevski wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Christopher
> Currie<christopher_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Emil Dotchevski<emildotchevski_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>> I think that you assume that the warning is reasonable and easy to
>>> fix, as with most warnings that could be silenced with casts. A lot of
>>> times, fixing such warnings is common sense. In that case, just a note
>>> to the library developer would be enough to have it fixed.
>>>
>>> But you can't generalize from this, to "all warnings should be silenced."
>>
>> On the other hand, many people work in environments where there is a
>> local policy that warnings will be treated as errors. If library code
>> emits warnings, the build breaks and the library is unusable.
> 
> I agree this is a very strong argument, and you're right that even
> though such policy is unreasonable, it may render a library basically
> unusable.

Why is such policy unreasonable? Suppose that building a source file that uses
Boost libraries produces 100 warnings from Boost code. Can you suggest a
reasonable strategy how a developer can spot the warnings in their own code
amids the pages of warnings from Boost? For bonus points, assume that Boost
is not installed system-wide, but is included in the project, possibly with
local tweaks.

- Volodya