On the build-time vs static analysis point:

I'd much prefer to have errors pointed out right from './mach build', which I 
can fix on the spot; rather than wait hours until I notice static analysis 
errors on a treeherder build.
(e.g., I always forget explicit/MOZ_IMPLICIT!)

Unless we can get cross-platform & consistent static analysis from our build 
environments?

g.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2016 at 11:20:30 PM UTC+10, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> I'm indifferent to this particular case, but I think that rkent's point
> about static
> checking is a good one. Given that C++ has existing annotations that say:
> 
> - This does not produce a useful return value (return void)
> - I am explicitly ignoring the return value (cast to void)
> 
> And that we have (albeit imperfect) static checking tools that can detect
> non-use of
> return values, it seems like we would ultimately be better-off by using
> those tools
> to treat use of the return value by the default flagging a compiler error
> when that
> doesn't happen yet a third annotation rather than treating "use the return
> value
> somehow" as the default and flagging a compiler error when that doesn't
> happen.
> I appreciate that we have a lot of code that violates this rule now, so
> actually cleaning
> that up is a long process gradually converting the code base, but it has
> the advantage
> that once that's done then it just stays clean (just like any other -Werror
> conversion).
> 
> -Ekr
> 
> 
> On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 5:03 PM, Bobby Holley <bobby...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 4:39 PM, R Kent James <ke...@caspia.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On 8/21/2016 9:14 PM, Nicholas Nethercote wrote:
> > > > I strongly encourage people to do likewise on
> > > > any IDL files with which they are familiar. Adding appropriate checks
> > > isn't
> > > > always easy
> > >
> > > Exactly, and I hope that you and others restrain your exuberance a
> > > little bit for this reason. A warning would be one thing, but a hard
> > > failure that forces developers to drop what they are doing and think
> > > hard about an appropriate check is just having you set YOUR priorities
> > > for people rather than letting people do what might be much more
> > > important work.
> > >
> > > There's lots of legacy code around that may or may not be worth the
> > > effort to think hard about such failures. This is really better suited
> > > for a static checker that can make a list of problems, which list can be
> > > managed appropriately for priority, rather than a hard error that forces
> > > us to drop everything.
> > >
> >
> > I don't quite follow the objection here.
> >
> > Anybody who adds such an annotation needs to get the tree green before they
> > land the annotation. Developers writing new code that ignores the nsresult
> > will get instant feedback (by way of try failure) that the developer of the
> > API thinks the nsresult needs to be checked. This doesn't seem like an
> > undue burden, and enforced-by-default assertions are critical to code
> > hygiene and quality.
> >
> > If your concern is the way this API change may break Thunderbird-only
> > consumers of shared XPCOM APIs, that's related to Thunderbird being a
> > non-Tier-1 platform, and pretty orthogonal to the specific change that Nick
> > made.
> >
> > bholley
> >
> > > :rkent
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