Re: Another ammunition

[Stephen Leake <Stephen.A.Leake@nasa.gov>]

"AG" <ang@xtra.co.nz> writes:

> > Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote:
> 
> > -ansi -Wall -pedantic -Wtraditional -Wpointer-arith -Wshadow
> > -Wwrite-strings -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wcast-qual
> > -Waggregate-return -Wmissing-declarations -Wnested-externs -Winline
> > -Werror -W
> 
> > Forces you to fix the simple bugs to even get your code to compile
> > (leaving you to be more creative in creating tricky logic bugs).
> 
> That's an interesting example. All those switches needed
> to force you to "fix the simple bugs"? How many people
> would you think would bother with all the switches?

That's what coding standards are for. Nobody should use any compiler
with just the default switches, at least not without a lot of thought
first. Here's the relevant section from our coding standard:

(2) Compilers shall be configured to enforce the ANSI standard. Table 1
    gives the compiler switches required

(3) All code should compile without warnings. However, it is sometimes
    impossible to eliminate warnings; such cases should be documented
    with comments in the code. 

TABLE 1. Required Compiler switch settings

GNU C -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -pedantic -ansi -Werror

> Even more importantly, how do you know *you* haven't
> missed one or two? 

Because I have read the manuals, and I have been using this set of
switches for several years. Every time I find a bug that I think
should have been caught by the compiler, I check the manual to see if
there is a new switch for that. 

Of course, first I say "we should be using Ada" :).

> Isn't it better to just have all of that built right into the
> language which compiler is required to enforce?

Yes. That is what Ada is for. 

But even with Ada, you have to read the compiler documentation and set
the compiler switches correctly.

-- 
-- Stephe