[Python-Dev] Buildbot report (almost July)

[Steve Dower]

On 29Jun2017 1013, Terry Reedy wrote:
> Great work.

Agreed. Thanks, Victor!

> How about compiler warnings (and errors)?  When I compile on Windows, 
> there are a boatload of orange-yellow warnings.  Some are about using a 
> deprecated featured; some about dodgy casts; some (I presume) about 
> other things.  Should 'no warnings' be a goal?

Yes, I think that's a good goal. We're quickly getting there as well - I 
just merged two contributions yesterday that should significantly reduce 
the number of warnings.

> I believe you once fixed some, but new commits added more.  Could 'no 
> additional warnings' be a CI requirement for merging? I expect that a 
> new "How to avoid compiler warnings on Windows" section of the devguide 
> would be needed.

This is probably not feasible without a *really good* section in the 
devguide. I would rather have warnings in the output than global 
suppressions, and suppressing warnings globally is the usual instinct. 
Locally suppressing warnings can be fairly hideous and is usually not 
portable.

Some warnings are also complicated because of the nature of CPython. For 
example, the socket module exposes deprecated CRT functions (on Windows) 
directly because the API of the socket module promises to provide the 
function directly. Changing to the safer function would break the API 
guarantee (except sometimes it won't... hence "complicated").

Noting in PR builds that there are new warnings would be great if 
possible. I'd be concerned about it becoming a hard requirement though - 
I much prefer to leave the final decision in the hands of trusted people 
and provide them enough information to make a good decision.

Cheers,
Steve