[YBA] kernel compile errors with GCC >= 4.6

[Jonathan Ben Avraham]

-Wall and -Werror are fine when the build system uses them WRT the GCC 
versions under which they have been tested.

The flags serve a useful purpose if the developer has been polite enough 
to specify the GCC version under which he released, and if there is some 
easy way to build without the flags.

I agree that not all software should have to compile without warnings. 
However, there is a deeply held superstition among managers (and some 
coders) that no warnings should be allowed in a released product. This 
reminds me of a 8200 commander who once publicly chastized an officer (Dr. 
Gabi Leshem) for having a "ברירת מחדל" in his code. The commander stated 
that he would not tolerate any "מחדלים" in his unit.

  - yba


On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Nadav Har'El wrote:

> Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2012 11:04:32 +0300
> From: Nadav Har'El <nyh at math.technion.ac.il>
> To: Baruch Siach <baruch at tkos.co.il>
> Cc: ILUG <linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il>
> Subject: Re: [YBA] kernel compile errors with GCC >= 4.6
> 
> On Wed, Apr 04, 2012, Baruch Siach wrote about "Re: [YBA] kernel compile errors with GCC >= 4.6":
>>> I would be very much surprised if the kernel could not be built with
>>> gcc-4.6 - this is stock on Fedora, so lots of people must be using it.
>>> Maybe not on PowerPC, though
>>
>> Recent kernel versions surely have all these warnings fixed. The kernel in
>> question, I suppose, is quite ancient.
>
> Unless a new compiler or optimizer suddenly became "smarter" and
> recognized some new possible mistakes that the previous one didn't.
> Or, in the case of this bug (see the link that someone gave earlier in
> this thread), that the warning only happens in some rare combination of
> #ifdefs, where, for example, some variable is defined but never used.
>
> Since the goal of the user is to *use* the program (not debug it), and
> since issues like unused-but-set variables certainly don't prevent
> the program from being used, I think it's stupid for the user's
> compilation to abort when the compiler discovers such issues
>
> Down with -Wall -Werror!
>
>

-- 
  EE 77 7F 30 4A 64 2E C5  83 5F E7 49 A6 82 29 BA    ~. .~   Tk Open Systems
=}------------------------------------------------ooO--U--Ooo------------{=
      - yba at tkos.co.il - tel: +972.2.679.5364, http://www.tkos.co.il -