Re: libgnomecanvas build problem - -Werror incorrect

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Darin,

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001, Darin Adler wrote:
> > [ the correct way to get this behavior if you want it ].
>
> I understand that's your opinion and personal preference, but calling
> it "correct" is a stretch.

        I'd like to suggest that I call it correct for some of the
following reasons:

        * autotools put a lot of effort into making building software
          easy and portable, the use of -Werror makes it difficult and
          non-portable again.

        * The breakage caused by -Werror is not obviously caused by
          -Werror, neither is a solution ( to what is probably a
          perfectly fine warning ) presented instead you get:

            in file sys/io.h included from a.c etc. etc.
            warning <some banal warning>
            Error in foo/baa/baz/
            Error in foo/baa/
            Error in foo/
            Error 1 - some error happened, bad luck.

        * Many newbie people build from CVS - indeed, you'd want to
          encourage them to do so, to get good quality bug reports, and
          introduce people to hacking. If errors such as the above stop
          experienced hackers [1] from wanting to build software - how
          much more, others who just see that the thing "doesn't build".

        * The behavior of -Werror changes depending on optimization level,
          consequently it can work perfectly for all Nautilus hackers, but
          not others using eg. -O2

        * The kniptions to get around -Werror, to make everything warning
          free and fine, using odd defines and flags, etc. etc. can really
          screw up exotic systems in strange ways.

        * Yes -Werror catches bugs, but then, simply using emacs to build
          the tree and paging through errors with C-x ` means there is a
          large incentive to get a warning free build, so you get to
          real errors fast.

        Anyway - each to his own, I'm happy you guys put the effort in to
ensure that the behavior doesn't occur in released archives, that's great,
thanks.  I can see there are benefits to using -Werror, I've caught some
really silly bugs in gnome-vfs / nautilus with this that were only seen on
-O2; but I didn't enjoy the experience whatsoever, and I've seen some
quite incredible 'warning fixes' as the flip side.

        As for 'correct' :-) clearly all my statements implicitely carry
"this is the personal opinion of me" - I'm sorry if me thinking that this
is the correct way offends you; but I'm sticking to my guns.

        Not using -Werror as the default is [IMHO] the correct solution
for free software projects that want to encourage people to build from
CVS, and to support a diversity of platforms and configurations.

        Respectfully,

                Michael.

[1] - me for a start, Iain for a 2nd, a good 'purifying' friend on
      Solaris for a 3rd ... etc.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot