On Wednesday 25 February 2009 08:16:23 am Tom St Denis wrote: > Eivind LM wrote: <...snip...> I've been reading this thread, and there is an important point that hasn't been made yet, or at least I would like to emphasize it if it has: Compiler default behavior changes are _REALLY_ annoying. Even when its done to fix a gcc bug, or for other good reasons, it still causes a lot of churn either in fixing Makefiles or fixing source code. I build custom distributions as well as various other s/w for a living, and just upgrading my toolchain from 4.0.2 to 4.2.2 caused almost half (of the over 200) purely open-source packages that I build to either need a patch or upgrade to a new version...and this is especially true with C++ code. Those clamoring for default behavior changes should consider that many (millions, probably) of source packages would likely need modifications if/when basic default behaviors change. And -Wall changes are as basic as it gets. I think it is a legitimate gripe that the warnings with -Wall are not set in stone already, and sometime change even now, but the solution is certainly not to change it some more. However, I recognize that people may want a -Weverything flag, and that does seem like a reasonable compromise, as that could be used as a poor-man's splint or other static-analysis tool. I happen to agree with Tom that lint and such is not a substitute for good programming practices, but what the heck...if the gcc developers can be convinced to add a -Weverything, why not. AS LONG AS THE CURRENT DEFAULTS STOP CHANGING.
