Re: More C type errors by default for GCC 14

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Arsen Arsenović <arsen@aarsen.me>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com>,
>  jwakely.gcc@gmail.com, gcc@gcc.gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 09 May 2023 22:21:03 +0200
> 
> > The concern is using the good will of the GNU Toolchain brand as the tip of
> > the spear or battering ram to motivate software packages to fix their
> > problems. It's using GCC as leverage in a manner that is difficult for
> > package maintainers to avoid.  Maybe that's a necessary approach, but we
> > should be clear about the reasoning.  Again, I'm not objecting, but let's
> > clarify why we are choosing this approach.
> 
> Both the GNU Toolchain and the GNU Toolchain users will benefit from a
> stricter toolchain.
> 
> People can and have stopped using the GNU Toolchain due to lackluster
> and non-strict defaults.  This is certainly not positive for the brand,
> and I doubt it buys it much good will.

It is not GCC's business to force developers of packages to get their
act together.  It is the business of those package developers
themselves.  GCC should give those developers effective and convenient
means of detecting any unsafe and dubious code and of correcting it as
they see fit.  Which GCC already does by emitting warnings.  GCC
should only error out if it is completely unable to produce valid
code, which is not the case here, since it has been producing valid
code for ages.

It is a disservice to GCC users if a program that compiled yesterday
and worked perfectly well suddenly cannot be built because GCC was
upgraded, perhaps due to completely unrelated reasons.  It would be a
grave mistake on the part of GCC to decide that part of its mission is
to teach package developers how to write their code and when and how
to modify it.