[TUHS] A few comments on porting the Bourne shell

[Luther Johnson]

All warnings are worthy of my consideration. I will usually learn 
something about my compiler, my program, and often both. The compiler's 
messages are valuable feedback in my quality work-style loop.

On 01/03/2023 12:19 PM, Warner Losh wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2023, 10:09 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski at gmail.com 
> <mailto:paul.winalski at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 1/2/23, Clem Cole <clemc at ccc.com <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>> wrote:
>     >
>     > FWIW: In my start-up times, under the same rules of being
>     disciplined, as
>     > VP of Engineering, I insisted, all C and C++ code was required to
>     > 'flex-e-lint' warning clean.   I gave my folks a 3-week week
>     slip to clean
>     > everything up.   I was cursed during that time.   But guess
>     what, the
>     > outstanding bug list dropped to ⅒ of what it had been.  Created
>     quite a few
>     > true believers.  And we made those 3 weeks back before we were done.
>
>     This was also the policy in DEC's compiler and software development
>     tools groups.  This was mainly VMS stuff and we didn't have flex and
>     lint, but as Clem can attest the C and C++ compilers had very
>     extensive warning capabilities.  It was group policy that all code had
>     to compile cleanly, without triggering diagnostic messages, before
>     check-in was allowed.  Once you get through the initial cleanup of
>     existing code, this policy pays back big time in avoidance of nasty
>     Heisenbugs.
>
>
> Not all fixes to appease warnings fix anything. But enough do that 
> it's worth it.
>
> The one caveat here is that people must understand the warning and 
> that any change makes things better. There is nothing worse than just 
> tossing a cast in to brute force it, only to later discover it's the 
> wrong cast or you needed a different semantic change.
>
> Warner
>

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