Re: [boost] Current Guidance on Compiler Warnings?

Subject: Re: [boost] Current Guidance on Compiler Warnings?
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-11-19 20:02:55

On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 11:21 AM Brian Kuhl via Boost <boost_at_[hidden]>
wrote:
>
> I'd like to confirm the guidance on Warnings I find here
> https://svn.boost.org/trac10/wiki/Guidelines/WarningsGuidelines
> is still considered current?
>
> context ...
>
> At Wind River we are in the process of working with Boost 1.68 and VxWorks
> 7 (with Dinkum 7.00  with and Clang  6.0 for ARM and IA boards and  GCC
8.1
> for PowerPC ) with the hope of bundling Boost with our product.
>
> Many of our customers make certified systems ( Planes, Trains, Medical
> Equipment, Factory Automation, etc. ) and the trend in theses industries
is
> to be pedantic about eliminating all compiler warnings.

In that context there are probably legal reason for zero-warning policy,
but it is not true that lack of warnings means fewer errors, in fact it
could easily lead to more errors. For example warnings about implicit
conversions are frequently "fixed" by replacing the implicit conversion
with explicit conversion (cast). But the two are semantically very
different, and therefore one of them is incorrect, and very likely that is
the explicit one.