Re: Is it time to take the middle-end stringop/array warnings out of -Wall?

Project / Subsystem

gcc / gcc

Date

2026-05-23

Proposer

Richard Biener <richard.guenther@gmail.com>

Source type

public_inbox

Consensus

Proposed

Sentiment

/10

Technical tradeoffs

  • Increased compilation time due to path analysis.
  • Potential for path rangers to miss some complex scenarios, leading to continued false positives.
  • Requires integration of path rangers into the warning emission process.

All attributes

project
gcc
subsystem
gcc
patch_id
discussion_id
D5B96773-0901-4572-A8E9-22576740CFE3@gmail.com
source_type
public_inbox
title
Re: Is it time to take the middle-end stringop/array warnings out of -Wall?
headline
Consider removing middle-end stringop/array warnings from -Wall
tldr
Richard Biener suggests using path rangers to prove paths to stringop/array warnings are not taken before emitting a diagnostic.
proposer
Richard Biener <richard.guenther@gmail.com>
consensus
Proposed
outcome
proposed
sentiment_score
technical_tradeoffs
  • Increased compilation time due to path analysis.
  • Potential for path rangers to miss some complex scenarios, leading to continued false positives.
  • Requires integration of path rangers into the warning emission process.
series_id
series_role
standalone
series_parts
[]
tags
  • warnings
  • static analysis
  • false positives
  • optimization
bugzilla_url
date
2026-05-23T00:00:00.000Z

Re: Is it time to take the middle-end stringop/array warnings out of -Wall?

Richard Biener suggests leveraging path rangers to enhance the precision of stringop/array warnings. The goal is to reduce false positives by proving that the paths leading to potential issues are not actually taken. This approach aims to improve the accuracy of static analysis without relying solely on optimization to prune unreachable paths.