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> namely, it seems gcc still does not have ``-Weverything`` I would love to have a -Weverything; as a fairly rusty C++ dev I originally thought -Wall was suppo

> namely, it seems gcc still does not have ``-Weverything`` I would love to have a -Weverything; as a fairly rusty C++ dev I originally thought -Wall was supposed to have, you know, all but was pretty surprised to learn it didn't actually contain all. It would be great if they deprecated -Wall and made it so -Weverything always did all warnings (including any newly introduced warnings).

jeorgun 12y ago
Clang's -Weverything isn't really as useful as it sounds; since it includes fairly-to-completely useless warnings like -Wc++98-compat, -Wpadded, or -Wweak-vtables, you'll end up spending so much time playing warning whack-a-mole that you might as well have not enabled the thing in the first place. At least that's been my experience.
- halosghost 12y ago
  I completely disagree. It's true that some of the warnings it enables aren't terribly useful, but being able to enable all warnings is very helpful instead of having to manually list ~40 flags. Additionally, -Wpadded and the like are actually helpful for optimizations. Plus, writing code (in C, I cannot speak for Cxx) which results in no warning output from `-Weverything` is actually not that difficult to do, and generally the result is that you've written more robust code in the process. A lot of projects are now trying to move to compile with `-Weverything` and not disable any warnings, and I personally think it's a great move.
  - jeorgun 12y ago
    For C, I'd agree that it's useful. The flags I listed have issues specifically for C++. -Wc++98-compat, on a C++11 or C++14 project, is about as helpful as you'd expect. -Wpadded is triggered pretty reliably by subclassess. And so forth. Of course it is possible to specifically disable useless warnings, but in my experience it's just as easy to add a reasonable selection of flags (say, -Wall -Wextra -Wold-style-cast -Wconversion -Wsign-conversion) than to start with -Weverything and work backwards. Still, it has been some time since I've tried using it; maybe I ought to give it another chance.
    - halosghost 12y ago
      I do not personally code in Cxx (which is why I refrained from making judgements about `-Weverything`'s use for it earlier). But, at least for C, almost all the warnings you get are helpful (with very few exceptions). At most, I end up disabling two or three warnings from `-Weverything` on my projects. And, personally, I prefer to use pragmas inside the code rather than flags to disable them; that way, I can explicitly declare in my code that I have intentionally done something which would raise a warning (as close to the actual something as possible rather than generally disabling it). The result is that I still get the warnings for wherever I did not intentionally invoke these actions and still get all the other warnings that I should pay attention to for best practices. Though I would personally argue for most people (particularly new C coders) using `-Weverything` wherever possible, if you see fit not to, that's your choice :)
    - cpeterso 12y ago
      Here's a detailed explanation of -Weverything from a clang developer. He says -Weverything is intended for clang developers' own testing. He recommends using -Wall -Wextra plus any individual warnings you may want. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/124574 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/124574 clang does not document its warning flags like gcc does, but a long (but now incomplete) list is available here: http://fuckingclangwarnings.com/ http://fuckingclangwarnings.com/
  - semi-extrinsic 12y ago
    The -Wmaybe-uninitialized flag can produce loads of false positives, and may not be very useful (depending on your code). The really interesting part is that a compiler that gives 100% correct warnings about using uninitialized variables can be proven to be able to solve the halting problem, thus it cannot exist.
    - emn13 12y ago
      Then again, if you construct your code such that determining whether a variable is initialized requires solving the halting problem, somebody should probably take your keyboard away :-). In practice, if your initialization isn't sufficiently transparent, you're just busy making bugs.
halosghost 12y ago
The only problem I have with keeping `-Wall` is that it's misleading. But, other than that, I don't mind keeping it around so long as there is an option that enables all warnings. And since 5.1 includes a few more fancy new warnings, it'd be great to see those added into this hypothetical `-Weverything` as well. But, the issue on their bugtracker for inclusion of this feature was opened during 4.8 and still hasn't been confirmed for a release to target… makes me SadInside™.
- madez 12y ago
  Misleading options and unnecessary inconsistencies should be frowned upon. They make it harder to learn a system and learning a system should be made as easy as possible. I'd consider consistency in regards to option availability, effect and syntax a top priority.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - ycombobreaker 12y ago
    Learning a system is important, but it doesn't always warrant breaking existing systems. If GCC were to reject the -Wall argument, many projects which have used it for years would break and now need an extra GCC version-check embedded into their build tools. The gcc manpage would be an appropriate place for developers to document any preferred replacement for -Wall, for new projects. Anyone learning build tools is likely to hit the manpages, and anyone who learns-by-google is still likely to see it in HTML ports of the manpages.
    - madez 12y ago
      The libre and open software community is way too considerate with existing users. Combine that with anarchistic development and you get the inconsistent and complex mess we ended up with. Debian is _horrible_. And it will never be good without radical changes, possibly including changing options and syntax of commands, breaking API's and ABI's and breaking every running instance of it. Just look at basic commands. It's 'cp ifile ofile' but 'dd if=ifile of=ofile'. This one-of-many wart has to go, exiled together with all its siblings. Common shell languages like sh and it's children are nightmarish abominations, unintuitive and unsafe - they deserve to die in flames. We need change. A change for the better; for intuitiveness, for elegance, conformity, consistency, for learnability. Until then, Windows and Apples OS will stand a chance. Intelligent design is what we need, not only evolution.

jeorgun 12y ago

Clang's -Weverything isn't really as useful as it sounds; since it includes fairly-to-completely useless warnings like -Wc++98-compat, -Wpadded, or -Wweak-vtables, you'll end up spending so much time playing warning whack-a-mole that you might as well have not enabled the thing in the first place. At least that's been my experience.

halosghost 12y ago
I completely disagree. It's true that some of the warnings it enables aren't terribly useful, but being able to enable all warnings is very helpful instead of having to manually list ~40 flags. Additionally, -Wpadded and the like are actually helpful for optimizations. Plus, writing code (in C, I cannot speak for Cxx) which results in no warning output from `-Weverything` is actually not that difficult to do, and generally the result is that you've written more robust code in the process. A lot of projects are now trying to move to compile with `-Weverything` and not disable any warnings, and I personally think it's a great move.
- jeorgun 12y ago
  For C, I'd agree that it's useful. The flags I listed have issues specifically for C++. -Wc++98-compat, on a C++11 or C++14 project, is about as helpful as you'd expect. -Wpadded is triggered pretty reliably by subclassess. And so forth. Of course it is possible to specifically disable useless warnings, but in my experience it's just as easy to add a reasonable selection of flags (say, -Wall -Wextra -Wold-style-cast -Wconversion -Wsign-conversion) than to start with -Weverything and work backwards. Still, it has been some time since I've tried using it; maybe I ought to give it another chance.
  - halosghost 12y ago
    I do not personally code in Cxx (which is why I refrained from making judgements about `-Weverything`'s use for it earlier). But, at least for C, almost all the warnings you get are helpful (with very few exceptions). At most, I end up disabling two or three warnings from `-Weverything` on my projects. And, personally, I prefer to use pragmas inside the code rather than flags to disable them; that way, I can explicitly declare in my code that I have intentionally done something which would raise a warning (as close to the actual something as possible rather than generally disabling it). The result is that I still get the warnings for wherever I did not intentionally invoke these actions and still get all the other warnings that I should pay attention to for best practices. Though I would personally argue for most people (particularly new C coders) using `-Weverything` wherever possible, if you see fit not to, that's your choice :)
  - cpeterso 12y ago
    Here's a detailed explanation of -Weverything from a clang developer. He says -Weverything is intended for clang developers' own testing. He recommends using -Wall -Wextra plus any individual warnings you may want. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/124574 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/124574 clang does not document its warning flags like gcc does, but a long (but now incomplete) list is available here: http://fuckingclangwarnings.com/ http://fuckingclangwarnings.com/
- semi-extrinsic 12y ago
  The -Wmaybe-uninitialized flag can produce loads of false positives, and may not be very useful (depending on your code). The really interesting part is that a compiler that gives 100% correct warnings about using uninitialized variables can be proven to be able to solve the halting problem, thus it cannot exist.
  - emn13 12y ago
    Then again, if you construct your code such that determining whether a variable is initialized requires solving the halting problem, somebody should probably take your keyboard away :-). In practice, if your initialization isn't sufficiently transparent, you're just busy making bugs.

halosghost 12y ago

The only problem I have with keeping `-Wall` is that it's misleading. But, other than that, I don't mind keeping it around so long as there is an option that enables all warnings. And since 5.1 includes a few more fancy new warnings, it'd be great to see those added into this hypothetical `-Weverything` as well. But, the issue on their bugtracker for inclusion of this feature was opened during 4.8 and still hasn't been confirmed for a release to target… makes me SadInside™.

madez 12y ago
Misleading options and unnecessary inconsistencies should be frowned upon. They make it harder to learn a system and learning a system should be made as easy as possible. I'd consider consistency in regards to option availability, effect and syntax a top priority.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ycombobreaker 12y ago
  Learning a system is important, but it doesn't always warrant breaking existing systems. If GCC were to reject the -Wall argument, many projects which have used it for years would break and now need an extra GCC version-check embedded into their build tools. The gcc manpage would be an appropriate place for developers to document any preferred replacement for -Wall, for new projects. Anyone learning build tools is likely to hit the manpages, and anyone who learns-by-google is still likely to see it in HTML ports of the manpages.
  - madez 12y ago
    The libre and open software community is way too considerate with existing users. Combine that with anarchistic development and you get the inconsistent and complex mess we ended up with. Debian is _horrible_. And it will never be good without radical changes, possibly including changing options and syntax of commands, breaking API's and ABI's and breaking every running instance of it. Just look at basic commands. It's 'cp ifile ofile' but 'dd if=ifile of=ofile'. This one-of-many wart has to go, exiled together with all its siblings. Common shell languages like sh and it's children are nightmarish abominations, unintuitive and unsafe - they deserve to die in flames. We need change. A change for the better; for intuitiveness, for elegance, conformity, consistency, for learnability. Until then, Windows and Apples OS will stand a chance. Intelligent design is what we need, not only evolution.