Re: New problem with the latest Kubuntu

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 2:10 PM, Guillaume Lelarge
<guillaume(at)lelarge(dot)info> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Subject is not really true :) With the latest Kubuntu, I got the latest gcc
> release. Now, when I compile pgAdmin3 from sources, I get a whole bunch of
> warning messages:
>
> ../pgadmin/include/images/splash.xpm:603: warning : deprecated conversion
> from string constant to "char*"
>
> It seems the new (4.2.3) gcc/g++ release throws this kind of warning
> messages. In fact, a lot of them. Something between 24,000 and 25,000
> warnings for pgAdmin3 trunk sources. Compile is finally successful, but I
> would prefer to be able to get these warnings out.
>
> So, I tried to get a look at it. Using "const char*" instead of "char*"
> seems to fix the issue, but this is getting bigger and bigger. All "char *"
> variables should be replaced, but also every functions/methods declarations
> using char* should be replaced with "const char*". And I think wxChar* will
> also need some tweaking.
>
> My C/C++ knowledge is not really helpful here and I will need advice from
> my fellow hackers :) Is this the right move ? or am I completely wrong ? If
> I came up with such a big patch, will it be reviewed for inclusion ?
>
> Thanks for any tips/comments.

Hmm, well technically that is correct of course - they are const char
*'s. My main concern about changing them is that the XPM files are a
standard format, so any changes are likely to get overwritten if
images are changed, or forgotten in new images. That said, different
apps use different var names in them anyway, so we often do have to
manually edit them.

As I see it we have three choices:

- Try using extern c on them (a suggestion from Greg Stark, though we
think that only affects linkage).
- Silence the warning on the GCC command line.
- Fix them.

I'm leaning towards fixing them to be honest.

--
Dave Page
EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com