Re: Testing for unknown flags in different compilers

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Fri, 21 Feb 2014, David A. Wheeler wrote:
>

> I think it is NOT a good idea for a developer to see warning 
> messages in his builds, but then suppress them for end-user builds. 
> Better to suppress them with good reason for all builds, if they are 
> not relevant!  Or if not, at least document why certain warnings are 
> not being "fixed"... and they're way more likely to be fixed or 
> documented if the users can easily see them.

Sorry for being so late to return to this discussion thread ...

To be sure, I am a firm believer in warnings.  Unfortunately, warnings 
are very much compiler and compiler version dependent.  Some compilers 
produce many spurious warnings when set to a high warnings level.

If Autoconf (or packages using it) engages a high warning level by 
default then GCC and other compilers will be less likely to include 
useful warnings in options like -W -Wextra because they will cause 
embarrasing build noise in most software.  This is also 
counter-productive to the cause.

Warnings should be seen by people who have an interest in and ability 
to fix them.

There are other sorts of warnings (often more serious) which are being 
soundly ignored by developers and users and continue unabated for 
years.  Take a look at .xsession-errors (or equivalent) on any desktop 
oriented system for an example of this.

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