1367434 - Have an option to print compiler warnings at end of build

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Build System :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

There is a huge list of warnings coming from directories/modules we expect to produce warnings w/o much of a use for a common developer.

It also moves the lines containing the object build dir off the screen (have to scroll).  Something I from time to time overlook if I have just built the configuration I wanted.

I always more expected to list errors, not warnings, which is much more useful.  Now I solve with with a filter used manually every time I build.

I don't know, I just don't find this much useful, that's all, also when warnings are easily turned to errors (--warnings-as-errors) where we want to capture them.

Comment 1

[Gerald Squelart (he/him) (not at Mozilla since 2022-09-15)]

Subjective thoughts:

It has the advantage of making me really want to get rid of them! (As soon as I find some free time...)
And once enough developers get annoyed, and warnings actually get fixed, it will be very valuable in catching new warnings your current work introduces.

But I think an opt-off option would be reasonable for people who really don't have the time and patience for it now.

Alternatively, it'd be great if it was possible to capture a list of warnings (e.g., when doing a full build from a public changeset), and subsequent builds will only show warnings that were not there before, highlighting warnings you likely just introduced.

Comment 2

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

If you read the commit message and discussion in bug 1360764, yes, we anticipated that raising visibility of warnings would get them noticed and spur people into fixing them. From the discussion on dev-platform, it appears this is already having its intended effect, with people actively talking about how to kill warnings from non-Gecko projects.

While I can sympathize with this feature request, I'd prefer to hold off a few weeks to see what kind of a state we're at. I have a feeling that most of the warnings will be silenced and the UX pain of all the warnings will be greatly diminished. If this in unacceptable and printing of warnings is causing too much short-term pain, I'd favor an undocumented environment variable to suppress them as a stop-gap.

Comment 3

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

We made some other changes to warning display in the last week or so. I've noticed people seemed to stop complaining about the warnings behavior since. Could you please reassess and (if appropriate) revise your feature request?

Comment 4

[Honza Bambas (:mayhemer)]

Yep way better. thanks.