RFC: RPM build flags

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 01:45:28AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Here's a not entirely tongue in cheek suggestion: the default build
> flags should include -fno-strict-aliasing.
> 
> I have spent most of today slogging through the compiler warnings
> for a random sample of packages (well, maybe not totally random,
> they're the dependencies of unixODBC).  What I saw convinced me
> of something I'd suspected for awhile: there is not any significant
> chunk of C code anywhere that isn't broken by strict-aliasing
> optimizations.

I think I agree with you.  I spent a long time looking at the strict
aliasing warnings generated by GCC for rpcgen-generated code.  I
couldn't find a good explanation anywhere for what the problems are
with the code and what sort of bugs the compiler could introduce.  For
example, making apparently simple and semantics-preserving changes to
the code made the warning go away, but did that make the bug go away?
(serious question -- I've no idea).

Does such a reference exist to help us understand the problem?

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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