Re: link-compatibility poll: results and feature removal

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-03-02 09:37:26

Vladimir Prus <ghost_at_[hidden]> writes:

> Here are the results:
>
> It has helped me already	1 vote (off-list)
> Sounds important 1 vote 
> Not a big deal, can live without it 1 vote 
> Eeh.. it just produces pointless messages I can't understand 
> 0 votes
> Never heard about this 0 votes
>
> And my own vote goes for "pointless messages". So, the distibution is very 
> even and it's hard to draw a coclusion. Guess I'll have to decide myself.

I, for one, am really afraid of removing the check. I guess I'm in
the "sounds important" camp.

> The problem with link-compatibility check is that they fail in more complex 
> scenarious. For example, I want to link single-threaded library into 
> multi-threaded one -- I really want that. Yet, I get a warning about 
> link-compatibility and I can stop it. 

Then single/multi-threaded shouldn't be link-incompatible.

> Another example is that I have custom toolset which is gcc + some
> extra processing steps. Now, I get numerous warnings that the new
> toolset is not link-compatible with gcc.

I don't understand that one at all.

> That fact that non-trivial cases produce warnings that can't be stopped is 
> really unfortunate, because spirious warnings make it almost impossible to 
> spot real warnings -- and users will learn to ignore *all* link-compatibility 
> warnings.

Yep, that's a serious problem.
Maybe the right thing to do is to have a way to say: "Yes, I know
there's a link-incompatibility here. Don't warn me and do it anyway"

> So, link-compatibility is half-implemented feature. I'm really not
> sure I'll have the time to finish it by 2.0 release. And while I'm
> sorry to remove a feature, especially one that have helped at least
> one user, I'm going to remove it later this week, unless there are
> good arguments against removal.

I guess I'm not very clear on the consequences of the proposed
removal. Normally when you request a target build, its dependencies
are built in a link-compatible way. So how does the warning get an
opportunity to fire?

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com