[FFmpeg-devel] How to handle compiler warnings

[Baptiste Coudurier]

Hi

M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 01:27:26PM +0200, Ivan Kalvachev wrote:
>>> On Jan 29, 2008 1:02 PM, Baptiste Coudurier
>>> <baptiste.coudurier at smartjog.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> Diego Biurrun wrote:
>>>>> The topic has come up again, it's time to discuss the subject.  I
>>>>> propose to try to avoid compiler warnings as much as possible in order
>>>>> to
>>>>>
>>>>> - have cleaner code,
>>>>> - have important warnings not be drowned out,
>>>>> - make FFmpeg a programming textbook.
>>>>>
>>>>> This does not include warning fixes that slow things down or obfuscate
>>>>> the code, but if in doubt I personally would err on the side of fixing
>>>>> the warning.
>>>>>
>>>> I wholeheartedly support this and I agree that it must not slow down the
>>>> code.
>>>>
>>>> If this reaches an agreement:
>>>> How should we proceed ? People jumping in and fixing them at sight, or
>>>> maintainers taking care of their files ?
>>> In MPlayer we already had incident. Diego fixed a warning in one way.
>>> Then he finds out that the fix gives different result than the old
>>> code and fixes it in another way. Then he gets flamed because the
>>> warning indicated actual bug and he had (re)committed buggy code, in a
>>> way that hides the warning. The whole issue was about trivial
>>> parenthesis.
>> hmm i dont remember but i do remember diego breaking nut.c with a
>> () warning fix :)
>> Anyway it was fixed quickly IIRC ...
> 
> That case was made worse by the misleading use of whitespace around
> the operators.
> 
>> I think the point to learn here is that warnings should be treated as
>> potential bugs and be fixed with the neccessary care.
> 
> Definitely.  That's why they're called warnings.
> 

So would it be reasonable to call for maintainers to clean the warnings
in their files ?

Or delegate the work to another dev, I volunteer to clean the warnings
and get flamed in cvslog if Im doing wrong.

-- 
Baptiste COUDURIER                              GnuPG Key Id: 0x5C1ABAAA
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