Re: Enabling compiler warning flags

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2012, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> Compiler warning flags cost nearly nothing to turn on when you're 
> *starting* a project, but they're harder to enable later (a thousand 
> warnings about the same thing later is harder than fixing it the 
> first time). And while some warnings are nonsense, their use can 
> make the resulting software much, much better. If we got people to 
> turn on warning flags all over the place, during development, a lot 
> of bugs would simply disappear.

What might actually happen is that a bunch of casts get added to the 
code in order to quench the warnings.  These casts cause new bugs when 
the code is updated or they hide later attempts to find conversion 
issues.

It is pretty common that the person trying to eliminate a warning does 
not understand the code well enough to understand the consequences of 
their action or is interested in a quick fix.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/