Very Computer

Hi, I asked a question about warning messages before and I "made clean"
and deleted any object files in /usr/obj. I tried to "make  world" a
third time, but I saved the error messages by doing "make buildworld 2>
/usr/tmp/buildworld-err" and guess what, I collected more than 150k of
warning messages.

So, I figure most people, if not everyone, will get these warnings when
compiling the world and the kernel. My question is, is it because of the
necessity of coding in certain way that these warning messages arise, or
is it just sloppy coding? E.g., there was a line saying "initialization
from incompatible pointers."

Any thoughts on this?

Quote:

> So, I figure most people, if not everyone, will get these warnings when
> compiling the world and the kernel. My question is, is it because of the
> necessity of coding in certain way that these warning messages arise, or
> is it just sloppy coding? E.g., there was a line saying "initialization
> from incompatible pointers."

It's not "sloppy coding" per se.  FreeBSD is based on 4.4BSD which
is based on 4.3BSD which is based on 4.2BSD ....  In the 25 years of
UNIX existence, the C language was developed and standardized at least
twice.  So, you're warnings may be a product of legacy code which
has been brought up-to-date (Don't fix something if it isn't broken).

Some warnings are intentional.  For example, then use of tempnam()
is discouraged because of security issues.  Some pieces of code
use tempnam(), and when the compiler sees this it will issue a
warning.  The hope is that some one will fix the code.

In general the warning can be ignored.  However, if you want to
get your hands dirty in FreeBSD development.  Removing warning
is good way to start.

--
Steve