Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
A Butterfly Flaps Its Wings
Andy Shevchenko, who is not a butterfly, happened to remark one day on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: "would it make sense to enable -Werror for default warning level, let's say W=0, at some point?" And this ended up producing great storms of change across the world.
The -Werror option is a command-line option for the GNU C Compiler (GCC). When compiling, GCC will detect many errors in your code, report them to you, and abort the attempt to compile your code. Perhaps you haven't quite made a real error, but your code is still not a good usage of the C language. In that case, GCC produces a warning instead and continues chugging away to build your executable. However, maybe you are so enthusiastic about proper C usage that you want GCC to treat those bad usages as if they were errors. The -Werror option tells GCC to do that.
Masahiro Yamada pointed out to Andy that "Every GCC release adds new warning options." And that "Enabling -Werror by default means the kernel build is suddenly broken with new compilers."
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
KDE for People Initiative Calls for AI Ban in Plasma
A new community of KDE wants the project to adopt a strict no-AI policy for KDE Plasma.
-
KDE Sets Ambitious Goals for 2026 and Beyond
KDE Connect reveals the goals for the Linux desktop darling, with one of those goals long overdue.
-
It’s Time to Test Fedora 45 Beta
Fedora 45 beta has been released with updated Gnome, KDE Plasma, and kernel.
-
Ubuntu Stonking Stingray Gets Even Rustier
Ubuntu 26.10 has completed its migration to the Rust-based coreutils.
-
AI Fixes Linux Bottlenecks Using “Hideous” Code
A Linux developer used AI to fix bottlenecks that caused problems when building the kernel. The resulting AI-generated code needed a lot of work.
-
Advanced Video Coding Still Under Patent
Brazilian patent BRPI0109962B1 has expired, which means that DivX and Xvid are no longer problematic for Linux, but it doesn’t mean that video is all of a sudden fully unleashed.
-
2,000 Vulnerabilities per Linux Release
Thanks to AI bug hunters, the Linux kernel is seeing record numbers of vulnerabilities, and it's overwhelming developers.
-
Linux Exempt from California’s Age Verification Law
So long as Linux is distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses, the OS is exempt from being required to verify the age of its users in California.
-
Roll Out the Cake: Linux Turns 35
35 years ago, a Finnish student began a humble project that would forever change the course of technology.
-
China Switching from Windows to Linux
China has ordered several government agencies to drop a Chinese-developed version of Windows 10 in favor of either KylinOS or UOS.