More on type qualifiers ignored on function return type

[Jim Marshall <jim dot marshall at wbemsolutions dot com>]

I have read up on this warning on the newsgroup and google. I understand 
the reasoning behind adding the warning, however; it is having a rather 
sad affect on our code base, which use to compile warning free (on 
Linux) with the 3.x compiler but now we get more warnings then stars in 
the night sky ;)

Basically we had been using the const qualifier on some function return 
types as informative to the user of API that the return value should not 
be freed or modified.

So the primary question is: is there a compiler switch we can use to 
stop this specific warning from being displayed?

second, and obviously off topic, If we wanted to change our code what 
would you recommend to indicate that the return value should not be 
modified or freed (I read a little about __attribute__const but didn't 
really follow what it was for exactly).

Thanks - I hope this is a bit more intelligent then my last post :(

-Jim