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Subject: Re: [boost] Official warnings policy?
From: Zachary Turner (divisortheory_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-11-04 17:26:45


On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Bo Persson <bop_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> Emil Dotchevski wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 12:12 PM, Vladimir Prus
> > <vladimir_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> >> Emil Dotchevski wrote:
> >>>> Unfortunately,
> >>>> recent discussion left me with the impression that few folks
> >>>> care.
> >>>
> >>> It is not about caring, once again the argument is about a
> >>> personal preference: is the ugliness and decreased readability
> >>> that is often required to silence a warning reasonable.
> >>
> >> I suggest we don't talk in the abstract. Once a specific set of
> >> warning options, together with -Werror is in place, you can raise
> >> your concerns
> >> about any particular warning emitted by any particular compiler,
> >> and hopefully, some per-warning-kind agreement can be reached.
> >
> > I agree that the only way warnings can be addressed effectively is
> > to
> > use -Werror. On the other hand, the idea that a warning is the same
> > as
> > an error challenges my world view. :)
> >
> > I understand why you say that we can't talk in the abstract. It's
> > downright silly not to fix certain "good" warnings and we, as a
> > community, definitely can agree on a reasonable definition of
> > "good".
> >
> > However this will not address the issue at hand, which is that
> > people
> > who use higher warning levels will see tons of warnings. A better
> > attitude is http://www.zlib.net/zlib_faq.html#faq35.
> >
>
> Yes, that's a good attitude. However, how are we going to be sure that
> the code works, when the compiler says it might not?
>
>
It's only a good attitude if the company you work for allows it to be. Many
companies have very strict code policies that actually prevent you from
comitting code to the repository if it results in the compiler generating a
warning. It's depressing that boost can't be used at all in such a company
for something so minor as a compiler warning.


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