On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 12:28 AM, David A. Wheeler <dwheeler@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 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. > GCC 4.8 added a couple of interesting flags (http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-4.8/changes.html): -fsanitize=address and -fsanitize=thread. Some reading about them is available at http://llvm.org/devmtg/2012-11/Serebryany_TSan-MSan.pdf. It might be helpful to projects if the auto tools enabled one or both by default. The overhead on Address Sanitizer looks small compared to the payoff. Also, the new -Og requires a debug level (-g2, -g3, etc). Jeff _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
