[RFC] GCC caret diagnostics

[Mark Mitchell]

Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:

> That is a good point. The underlying mechanism can be fine tuned
> later. What would be the main problems to get caret diagnostics in
> trunk? The most common issue is probably bad locations but I don't see
> that as a major problem. On the contrary, the only reliable way to fix
> this is to enable caret diagnostics, otherwise people hardly bother
> with the exact location. 

I like caret diagnostics, so I'm in favor of the idea of the patch. 
But, I disagree with this style of argument.  Intentionally enabling a 
feature when we don't feel it's ready for public consumption in order to 
try to force people to fix it might be good for us as developers, but 
it's not good for users.  Carets should be on by default when -- only 
when -- we judge the accuracy to be sufficiently great that ordinary 
users will say "Wow, great new feature!" not "Gee, how frustrating, that 
sometimes works, but often just lies to me."

I wouldn't object to having the functionality in the compiler as an 
option (but off by default), until we fix the accuracy, though.

Thanks,

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713