[maemo-developers] RFC: Proposal to solve multiple repository, poor QA situation

[From: Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

ext David Hagood wrote:
> May I suggest that the uploads consist of source, not pre-built
> binary .deb's?
> 
> This helps in several ways:
> 1) it helps reduce (but not eliminate) the risk of trojans.
> 2) It helps when a newer version of the system comes out, as the source
> is guaranteed to be available.
> 3) It eases the signing of packaged by a trusted authority.
> 4) It helps guarantee the requirements of the package are consistent
> with the current release.
> 5) It forces developers to make their code build cleanly and easily.
> 
> And now I'm going to say something that will probably draw great ire
> from some folks:
> 
> When a program is being evaluated for inclusion, the presence of any
> compiler warnings in the build should be taken as a red flag.
> Programmers who take the time to make their code compile cleanly with
> "-Wall -Wextra -Werror -fmudflap" tend to have fewer errors in their
> code. Compiler "warnings" are rarely just warnings - they are errors,
> bugs waiting to happen.

-Werror should be used when developing software, but IMHO it doesn't
belong to released software as another compiler version or building
on another CPU architecture can give different warnings and then
completely fail the build. (and of course fixing compiler warnings
instead of the problems they point out because thing doesn't build
with -Werror is even worse)

-fmudflap isn't supported by current maemo toolchain and according
to the latest GCC status report and bugs in GCC bugzilla it doesn't
work even in latest GCC versions.


> I'm not saying "non-zero warnings := rejection", but it should be taken
> as an opportunity for constructive feedback to the programmer.


	- Eero