On Tuesday 18 December 2012 00:28:14 David A. Wheeler wrote: > Jim Meyering said: > > Did you realize that several GNU projects now enable virtually > > every gcc warning that is available (even including those that > > are new in the upcoming gcc-4.8, for folks that use bleeding edge gcc) > > via gnulib's manywarnings.m4 configure-time tests? > > > > Of course, there is a list of warnings that we do disable, > > due to their typical lack of utility and the invasiveness > > of changes required do suppress them. > > Is there any way that the autoconf (or automake) folks could make compiler > warnings much, much easier to enable? Preferably enabled by default when > you start packaging something? For example, could gnulib warnings and > manywarnings be distributed and enabled as *part* of autoconf? If not, > could autoconf at least strongly advertize the existence of these, and > include specific instructions to people on how to quickly install it? The > autoconf section on "gnulib" never even *MENTIONS* the "warnings" and > "manywarnings" stuff! And while automake has warnings, they are for the > automake configuration file... not for compilation. > > 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. you might want to look at the autoconf-archive project: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ they provide AX_CFLAGS_WARN_ALL for starters, and then for more refined -W flags, you can easily use AX_CHECK_COMPILE_FLAG. -mike
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