Re: gnumeric and compiler attitude

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas apestaart org>]

> > Are there known test cases that give the bad results? I hunted around the
> > gnumeric mailing list for an explanation of this when the check originally went
> > in and found nothing.
> > 
> > It would be nice to have a "this function should return this, but we have seen
> > bogus results" type test or two for after I have built it.
> 
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=68057

This one seems to say that it was NOT an error with gcc, but rather 
gnumeric using the "wrong" header to pull stuff in.

> http://maths.newcastle.edu.au/~rking/R/devel/01c/0929.html

This one seems to say that gnumeric pulled in a 2.5 year old function from 
R (whatever R is) that has been fixed in R already.

Neither seem to indicate it's a gcc problem, and I hope you consider 
removing that check, I don't really like it when people say "oh, it's 
redhat's gcc compiler who's to blame" when all that redhat's gcc has ever 
done is show bugs or code with undefined behaviour that other gcc versions 
let pass, but should have flagged as well.

Case in point : I've NEVER EVER had mplayer compiles fail because of using 
RedHat's gcc.  I'd hate it if gnumeric would get an mplayer attitude ;)

Of course, if there IS a specific bit of code that compiles wrongly on 
redhat's gcc which demonstrates the problem, feel free to share it.  It 
would also then be easy to make a configure test for it.

But on the evidence in these reports, I'd say drop the check.  Chances are 
you should be checking for something else instead.

Thomas

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