Re: [PATCH] Add -Wcast-qual flag

["Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@amd.com>]

On Thursday 21 December 2006 13:51, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>> Keir Fraser <keir@xensource.com> 21.12.06 11:41 >>>
> >
> >On 21/12/06 10:05, "Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@amd.com> wrote:
> >> The xen-cast.diff adds the -Wcast-qual flag.
> >
> >We don't enable this flag precisely because we end up needing to scatter
> >const all over the place like confetti. I'm not convinced that use of
> > const improves code quality. I fear we'd end up with 'const foo * const
> > bar' all over the place -- ugly and confusing to most programmers (who
> > frequently mess up const placement, in my experience).
>
> While I'd really like to see all Xen code become const-correct (because I
> do believe this helps with code quality, like does marking read only data
> read only in the page tables), I don't think adding the warning here is
> appropriate 

IMO, it is. It is one step towards to do more type-safe coding.

> - after all, in C this is one of the purposes of adding 
> explicit casts (although I agree it's questionable to use casts for this
> purpose). And no, I don't think that many people screwing up const
> placement is a proper argument for not using const where possible.

Full ack.

Christoph