[Geany-devel] [PATCH 2/3] Prevent -Wmissing-prototypes report warning when compiling a plugin

[Jiří Techet]

>> Why? If you want to ensure that the sources satisfy some standards,
>> then it's alright. You use -Wall after all.
>
> Really?
> I had a quick look and didn't find any reference. Did I miss anything?

My imagination, apparently ;-).

>
>
>> > -Wmissing-prototypes and friends are gcc specific and would break
>> > building with other compilers.
>> >
>> > I guess you didn't mean to add them to the build system directly :).
>>
>> You can use gnome-compiler-flags.m4 from the gnome-common package that
>> checks whether you use gcc for compilation and only in this case the
>> above flags are added (it adds a configure parameter where the set of
>> flags can be configured).
>
> Ok. But IMO this is overhead we don't need. Specific compiler flags
> (more specific than -c, -o and -g), should be in the responsibility of
> each individual developer.
> But of course, we could add the mentioned flag as hint in the HACKING
> file.

It's fine as long as there is someone who regularly checks that the
compilation works without warnings even with stricter compiler flags.
But from my experience, things like that are often forgotten...

Regarding the "overhead" (if there was some, I seriously doubt it will
be something measurable), you should distinguish two types of users:

1. Developers - these will feel the overhead because they compile
geany often. But these are also those that definitely _should_ use the
flags.

2. Users - these will download geany when you make a release and
compile it. For them it will be a useless overhead but because they
download and compile geany twice a year, they won't care whether the
compilation takes a few more seconds.

So I don't find any audience that would be affected by enabling the
flags in a negative way. I'm not saying that you have to enable them -
this is really up to you - I'm just saying what I would do.

Regards,

Jiri