Re: -Werror

[David Kastrup]

Dan Eble <dan@faithful.be> writes:

> Han-Wen proposed building with -Werror in a merge request.  What do you think?
>
> I like -Werror, but I've only ever used it where there were very few
> (or one) supported build environments, all of which were covered in
> CI.  A dimension of the CI coverage was optimization level, which can
> change what the compiler discovers.
>
> We don't have that here, so we might regret turning warnings into
> errors all at once.  How about we turn particular warnings into
> errors, starting with narrowing conversions and printf formatting, and
> wait to see if anyone reports problems?  (Am I being too
> conservative?)

We have a variety of compilers people use, and it's literally taken
decades to get stuff like the Bison compilations under control.  The
warnings depend on compiler versions and architectures.  Essentially
prohibiting any change that may trigger a warning in CI will be quite
annoying for developers who encounter systemic warnings not easily
controlled.

I think that the process of thinking about how to reduce warnings and
the process of general development should not be linked hard.  At the
same time, getting fresh warnings _reported_ for changes seems like a
good idea.  Making it a no-go to have them, however, seems too
restrictive to me.

-- 
David Kastrup