Making GCC and Other C++ Compilers Very Strict

Question

I\'m working on a large collaborative C++ project that is both developed and run on various flavors of Linux, OS X and Windows. We compile across these platforms with GCC, Visua

Answer 1

As well as -pendantic you should also provide a -std switch. If you need a stricter compile then you should know what standard you are trying to conform to. Typically for current c++ this would be -std=c++98. ( -ansi performs a similar function in C++ mode, but -std= is more explicit.)

Answer 2

Copy and paste below line into your master cmake file. below line comprises almost most useful compiler flags in order to test yourself more stricter.

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-O0 -fno-elide-constructors -pedantic-errors -ansi -Wextra -Wall     -Winit-self -Wold-style-cast -Woverloaded-virtual -Wuninitialized -Wmissing-declarations    -Winit-self -std=c++98")

If you dont use cmake just copy flags that in double quotes and send to your compiler

Answer 3

In similar situation we gave up and moved to ACE framework, hiding the difference between platforms.

Answer 4

I wrote the blog post on this topic after researching several options. You also need to handle the cases where you are using other libraries but they are not following strict compilation. Fortunately there is easy way to handle them as well. I have been using this extensively in all my projects.

In short, use following compiler options to turn on very strict mode (below is what I put in CMakeLists.txt):

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "-std=c++11 -Wall -Wextra  -Wstrict-aliasing -pedantic -fmax-errors=5 -Werror -Wunreachable-code -Wcast-align -Wcast-qual -Wctor-dtor-privacy -Wdisabled-optimization -Wformat=2 -Winit-self -Wlogical-op -Wmissing-include-dirs -Wnoexcept -Wold-style-cast -Woverloaded-virtual -Wredundant-decls -Wshadow -Wsign-promo -Wstrict-null-sentinel -Wstrict-overflow=5 -Wswitch-default -Wundef -Wno-unused -Wno-variadic-macros -Wno-parentheses -fdiagnostics-show-option ${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS}")

You can read more about how to turn on and off this strict mode for specific portions of code here: http://shitalshah.com/p/how-to-enable-and-use-gcc-strict-mode-compilation/

Answer 5

Beside the pedantic-error that everyone else suggested, IMO, it's always good to run lint as part of your compile process.

There are some tools out there:

• cpplint (free)
• gimple lint
• coverity

They will save a lot of your time.

Answer 6

-pedantic-errors.

See more on gcc(1).