On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 10:07 AM, Tony Wetmore <tony.wetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 12/20/2010 10:00 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote: >> >> The idea is that all programmers must use the defines. We can place >> the defines in USER_CFLAGS on all machines. It then becomes a question >> of how to retain the flags. > > Ah, that's different. I thought your desire for those warning flags was a > personal preference, not a project requirement. > > If everyone is supposed to use the same warnings, but some developers keep > turning those off, your project/team has a management problem. > > I don't think GCC can help much with rogue developers. It can be a tricky problem. Its a tough battle when folks like Linus Torvalds or Ulrich Drepper make asinine statements [1, 2]. Many programmers do not know any better and blindly follow their style and advice in an attempt to be a l33t K&R coder. I personally wish people would read Wheeler, Howard, LeBlanc, Viega (or many others), and stop writing useless 1970's era code. Getting pwn'd is not a badge of honor - it indicates a failure in your craft. The environment is now toxic and hostile, and there is no place for that style of code. I spend about 1/4 to 1/3 of my week correcting [insecure] code written in that style in preparation for future audits. Its too bad that the folks who write it don't have to sit through a three day audit by a US federal agency; or spend weeks correcting the code because security related advice and requirements were not followed. Jeff [1] Linus Torvalds, "PATCH: Don't compare unsigned variable for <0 in sys_prctl()". http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Kernel/2006-11/msg08325.html [2] Ulrich Drepper, "PATCH: safe string copy and concetation". http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2000-08/msg00052.html [3] David Wheeler, "Secure Programming for Linux and Unix HOWTO". http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/ps/Secure-Programs-HOWTO.ps.gz
