The only annoying thing really is the second strict aliasing example, requiring the temporary variable. It just seems really inelegant. But it has been a pitfal

The only annoying thing really is the second strict aliasing example, requiring the temporary variable. It just seems really inelegant. But it has been a pitfall ever since, since using an explicit cast removes the warning (now error) but still breaks strict aliasing. I think the most pragmatic solution is to just compile everything with no strict aliasing. You still get errors for accidental incompatible assignments but won't get bitten by the optimizer.