Roberto Bagnara bagnara@cs.unipr.it writes:

[...]

| > Given the tone you're taking | | Tone? Which tone? I am simply defending a point of view that I | believe is quite reasonable.

Telling people they are irrespectful to users, when it is a matter of style isn't something I consider "reasonable" for any reasonable definition of "reasonable.

[...]

| > and the lack of recognizing actual facst, | | Facts? Which facts? I was offered no facts: you and others have | simply stated that your very personal taste is against things like | | void foo(int /* i */) { } | | which I don't believe is a fact. OK, you offered the fact that | the GNU standard library does not always use the form (1) above: | this is a fact.

Well, you need to agree with yourself when a fact was given or not. Saying no, then yes isn't helpful.

[...]

| (I wonder if, | to be consistent, you should also advocate the removal of the unused | argument warnings from g++.)

As a g++ user, probably yes. *I* never saw its usefulness. But I understand that other peolpe do use it, and since I don't use it in my own code its mere presence in the compiler doesn't bother me.

| I also do not consider a fact the suggestion that we should write | a script to filter out warnings for each compiler we use, perhaps | with variants for different compilation flags, perhaps changing | the scripts to accommodate changes in GiNaC header.

First I never qualify that as a *fact* -- so I don't understand why you're bringing it in the first place in this part of your reply.

Now, given the wide variety of kinds of noise^Wdiagnostics different compilers output, I do consider that suggestion a good one.

[...]

| Perhaps the implicit suggestion we have been given is to stop | compiling with extra warnings, but we don't want to do it. | We did not invent the extra warnings options.

Not just because you didn't invent them means you ought to use them.

[...]

| I keep my fingers crossed | in the hope that the GCC developers will resist the temptation | of screwing their header files in the name of abstract style | considerations that do not take the user's needs into account.

Well, the header files were screwed (IMO) many times in the name of "abstract style" considerations -- I can't say those modifications were actually taking any input from users. You can look in the archives to see the logs.

We also use

#pragma GCC system_header

to make sure no warning will be output (with some set of options) just because someone thought a given abstract style ought to be diagnosed.

Just learn to use the tool.

-- Gaby