building and testing options

[Frank Warmerdam]

Kralidis,Tom [Burlington] wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Im writing mapowscommon.c, I've come across some issues to which some
> advisory would be appreciated.
> 
> 1./ I usually compile C code with:
> 
> (on Linux)
> 
> $ gcc -ansi -pedantic -Wall -O foo.c
> 
> MapServer has -Wall and -O2 already as part of the build process.  Would
> the other flags be useful for MapServer?  I use them because they
> support C ISO.  See `man gcc` for more info.

Tom,

In my opinion -Wall is our standard "chosen" level of cleanness.  You
can always compile with more strict warnings, but as a group I think
we have only committed to trying to keep -Wall building clean.

> 2./
> 
> Should we be doing some sort of structured memory debugging?  For
> example, do people use tools like valgrind when building?  If not,
> should we (presumably against a few use cases for the code)?

I use valgrind on an adhoc basis to test for memory leaks.  I'd strongly
encourage others too as well.  It rocks!

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org