[avrdude-dev] Re: [RFC] Enable warnings and make them errors.

[E. Weddington]

On 4 Sep 2003 at 23:41, Theodore A. Roth wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Sep 2003, Joerg Wunsch wrote:
> 
> :)As Brian Dean wrote:
> :)
> :)> > You call it, I'll commit it.
> :)
> :)> Let's go with -Wall for now.  We can always add -Werror later.
> :)> Maybe Joerg will want to weigh in too.
> :)
> :)My EUR 0.02: at least the files for releases must not use -Werror.
> 
> Why "must not"?
> 
> What if someone tries to compile avrdude on a unported system and there are
> warnings that they ignore during the build which lead to mysterious
> failures? I'll admit that's stretching things a bit, but with -Werror they
> may be more likely to make a bug report for something we missed. If they get
> a failed build and don't report it because they feel the program is crap
> since it won't build, that doesn't help anyone. Besides, most people are
> probably going to use Eric's WinAVR, the ports, or the RPMs anyways. And
> those that do compile from source, in most cases, will be able to either fix
> it or turn off the -Werror.
> 
> Alternatively, it would be easy to add AVRDUDE_DEV_WERROR (or some env var) 
> to the Makefile.am such that a developer could just set it to -Werror and
> export it for eternity. Then avrdude would always built with -Werror for the
> that developer.
> 
> In the end, if the concensus is for no -Werror, that's fine with me. My
> problem is that if I have to think about turning it on, I'll forget and Eric
> (or someone else) will have to fix the warnings I introduce. ;-)
> 

I wanted to clarify my stance.
I didn't necessarily want -Werror, I just wanted to have a debate about why 
not add some -W flags in the first place, which we're now having. :)

So I'm all up for -Wall.

I hestitate on -Werror. Personally I've never liked promoting warnings to 
errors, because after all they *are* warnings. I just get into a habit of 
squashing all warnings too as a part of my writing.

I'm also up for adding more -W flags, a la Joerg's description. Personally 
I like -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes and I'm sure there are 
others as well.

I also wouldn't mind setting a language standard flag as well, perhaps 
-std=gnu99?

All of these flags can be introduced after 4.2.0 though.

Eric