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List:       lyx-devel
Subject:    Policy for breaking compilation with -Werror
From:       Scott Kostyshak <skostysh () lyx ! org>
Date:       2018-10-28 19:39:35
Message-ID: 20181028193935.7duvf46hrgbm3wjc () barna
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Dear all,

I think that preserving compilation with -Werror can help catch real
bugs. Most of the time, warnings are harmless/incorrect, and can even be
a pain to address. It's thus debatable whether the bother of fixing
harmless/incorrect warnings is worth the small chance of catching a real
bug.

I would like to add a policy to our Development.lyx manual. The policies
we have in there are not hard policies and exceptions can always be
made. It would just be nice to have a basis for discussion.

There is a recent issue that Kornel and I have been dealing with, where
the -Werror in GCC 7.3.0 is more strict than in GCC 5.4.0. I think this
is common, as compilers try to add detection of more potential problems.
However, it creates an extra burden on the developer because they need
to address a warning that does not show up for their GCC version. In
this case, it seems to me that the pain of trying to preserve -Werror is
not worth the benefit. (I've only recently come to this conclusion,
after the current situation). I thus propose the following guideline to
add to Development.lyx:

  A developer should fix any issue that causes compilation with -Werror to
  fail on the GCC version that ships with the previous Ubuntu LTS.  For
  example, if Ubuntu 18.10 is the most recent Ubuntu release, then Ubuntu
  18.04 is the current LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 is the previous LTS.  Thus,
  compilation with -Werror for the GCC version that ships with 16.04
  should be preserved.

Any thoughts?

Scott

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