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

Subject: Re: [boost] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?
From: Vinnie (thevinn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-09 08:54:13

>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. SQLite is developed primarily using GCC and it does compile without warnings on GCC using the -Wall and -Wextra flags. There are occasional reports of warnings coming from VC++, however.

Static analysis has not proven to be helpful in finding bugs. 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. On the other hand, we have on occasion introduced new bugs in our efforts to get SQLite to compile without warnings.

Our experience, then, is that static analysis is counter-productive to quality. In other words, focusing on static analysis (being concerned with compiler warnings) actually reduces the quality of the code. Nevertheless, we developers have capitulated to pressure from users and actively work to eliminate compiler warnings. We are willing to do this because the other tests described above do an excellent job of finding the bugs that are often introduced when removing compiler warnings, so that product quality is probably not decreased as a result."