Re: Future autoconf package compression

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 9:35 PM, Jim Meyering <address@hidden> wrote:
> Paul Eggert wrote:
>> On 12/15/2012 05:54 PM, Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> FYI, a couple of weeks ago, Aki Helin exposed still more problems in
>>> gzip's unpacking code.
>>
>> Well, to be fair, I also have a similar problem with 'tar'
>> in my inbox, from Aki, but I'm not inclined to suggest that
>> we stop using 'tar'....
>
> Of course.  Nor am I.
> GNU tar's overall code quality is far higher than that of gzip.
-Wall -Wextra -Wconversion -Wstrict-overflow go a long way in
uncovering basic developer problems, like truncations, conversions,
and 2's compliment behavior. Everyone - from GNU to private
development teams - could benefit from the illumination of issues by
the toolchain's warning system.

I understand the warning system produces false positives at times, but
I don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I work around the
warning system's short comings in an effort to keep code quality up.
Its what we have to do to separate the wheat from the chaff.

 Its too bad they are not used more often.

Jeff