Re: GCC 7 warnings

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Since --enable-gcc-warnings is on by default for building the
> development version, it needs to build relatively cleanly with a
> reasonably recent GCC.  It's okay to have the code ready for the
> bleeding edge, but if that triggers warnings with slightly older GCC,
> it's counter-productive IMO, because asking developers to use GCC
> which is too new might waste their time due to GCC bugs.  GCC 6 or 5
> is not yet old enough to cause those who use them such trouble.

GCC 5.4 is OK. I still test with it, at times. Not sure it's worth going back 
further than that though, for developers.

I don't use bleeding-edge GCC, which is GCC 8 (not released yet).  I haven't 
even upgraded yet to the latest stable release, 7.2.0. So I'm not really 
bleeding-edge.

In my experience GCC 7 is more reliable than older versions, for compiling C 
programs.  I don't recommend using GCC 8 for production, though.

The point of the May 2016 cleanup was to remove gorp like UNINIT (and it is 
admittedly awkward) when GCC had gotten smart enough that the gorp wasn't 
needed. Unfortunately there is no easy way to make UNINIT's syntax C-like, at 
least not with current GCC. In the meantime UNINIT's technical advantages 
outweigh its stylistic awkwardness.