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

Subject: Re: [boost] Are warnings acceptable artifacts from builds?
From: Brian Ravnsgaard Riis (brian_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-09-11 06:06:08

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Daniel Hulme skrev:
> 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.

Actually, I believe they're claiming that they more heavily rely on a
rather impressive unit- and regression testing scheme than on compiler
warnings. No warning has ever informed them of a bug that their
regression tests would not have caught.

They then conclude that the compiler warnings may lead to lower quality
code, which I have trouble believing. If rearranging or rewriting code
to avoid a given compiler warning results in a bug then I suspect they
have a design problem instead. YMMV.

Just my chuck-in here. :-)

 /Brian

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