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

Subject: Re: [boost] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?
From: Daniel Hulme (st_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-11 03:39:56

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.

-- 
"So long  as we  avoid  accepting  as true  what is  not so,  and always
preserve the right order of deduction  of one thing from another,  there
can be nothing  too remote to be reached in the end,  or too well hidden
to be discovered."   --  Descartes, 269 years before Kurt Gödel was born