Re: [PATCH 2/2] cat-file: Fix an gcc -Wuninitialized warning

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mar 28, 2013, 19:02 UTC
Message-ID: <20130328190226.GB17178@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <5154908B.1040801@ramsay1.demon.co.uk>

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 06:48:43PM +0000, Ramsay Jones wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> > I'm OK with this, if it's the direction we want to go. But I thought the
> > discussion kind of ended as "we do not care about these warnings on
> > ancient versions of gcc; those people should use -Wno-error=uninitialized".
> 
> Hmm, I don't recall any agreement or conclusions being reached.
> I guess I missed that!

I think Jonathan said that and nobody disagreed, and I took it as a conclusion.

> Hmm, so are you saying that this patch is not acceptable because
> I used a compiler that is no longer supported?

No, I just think we should come to a decision on how unreadable to make the code in order to suppress incorrect warnings on old compilers. I can see the point in either of the following arguments:

  1. These compilers are old, and we do not need to cater to them in the
     code because people can just _not_ set -Werror=uninitialized (or
     its equivalent). It is still worth catering to bugs in modern
     compilers that most devs use, because being able to set -Werror is
     helpful.

  2. The code is not made significantly less readable, especially if you
     put in a comment, so why not help these compilers.

When we can make the code more readable _and_ help the compiler, I think it is a no-brainer. I am on the fence otherwise and don't care that much. I just think we should apply the rule consistently.

-Peff