[TUHS] Re: A few comments on porting the Bourne shell

[Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>]

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On Tue, Jan 3, 2023, 10:09 AM Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/2/23, Clem Cole <clemc@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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