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Date:      Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:21:09 +0100
From:      Dimitry Andric <dim@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Brandon Falk <bfalk_bsd@brandonfa.lk>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: De-warning...ing clang Kernel Builds
Message-ID:  <4F593EE5.1060803@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <4F58F798.1000308@brandonfa.lk>
References:  <4F58F798.1000308@brandonfa.lk>

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On 2012-03-08 19:16, Brandon Falk wrote:
> Is there anyone actively working on cleaning up the codebase to not throw
> warnings when built with clang. I realize these warnings do not matter, but I
> generally prefer to get rid of warnings if possible. I can't imagine it would
> take too long, although I could see an issue with developers not familiar with
> the clang warning system forgetting to check clang builds for warnings while
> they add new code.

Take care saying "these warnings do not matter".  Unfortunately, it is
not as simple as that.

In some cases, the warnings are indeed superfluous, and it is rather
annoying to fix them (a.k.a "shut up the compiler").  In other cases,
however, the warnings point out real problems.

Obviously, those problems can be fixed, but sometimes that is either
very hard, or very disruptive, or both.  And there are even cases where
the problem may be very subtle, and cannot be fixed without extremely
careful inspection (and retrospection).

Last but not least, applying fixes may break code in unexpected ways.
Especially if the code has been sitting untouched for years, it is prone
to be sensitive to even the smallest changes...

One big issue is that there are no tinderbox builds that use clang, and
therefore people don't notice that commits introduce new warnings (or
errors, even) when building with clang.  This is something that should
be fixed sooner rather than later.

On the other hand, if -CURRENT would be switched to use clang by
default, the problems would hopefully be taken care of sooner. :)



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