Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
The name -Wall was chosen some 20 years ago. Perhaps it was a mistake,
however it was decided, and documented, and has been used successfully,
for a long time. I think it would take a very persuasive argument to
change it now. That argument would need to be more than merely "the
name doesn't seem right for what it does." You need to consider the
cost of changing all the Makefiles out there which use it, and the
benefits of making the change.
Why not change it to -Wmost or -Wpopular and then mark -Wall as
deprecated for 3-5 years before removal. I would think that would be a
reasonable time frame for such a change with so much history. Or just
leave -Wall as-is, and just discourage further use via a deprecated warning.
