[PATCH] D46159: [clang-tidy] Add a flag to enable alpha checkers

[Aaron Ballman via Phabricator via cfe-commits]

aaron.ballman added a comment.

In https://reviews.llvm.org/D46159#1086472, @lebedev.ri wrote:

> In https://reviews.llvm.org/D46159#1086463, @pfultz2 wrote:
>
> > > As Devin says (and as we discussed this with Anna Zaks) alpha checkers are still in development, so we don't want to expose them to the users, even very curious ones.
> >
> > Then why do we make them available with `clang --analyze`? If the plan is not to expose them to the users at all, they should be removed from the codebase, as they are just sitting there bit-rotting.
> >
> > Ideally, I see no problem exposing them to users. This will allow more users to run them on their codebases and submit issues or patches for the problems they find.
>
>
> Just so i'm perfectly clear, i find this "they are not for common user, so let's not expose them at all" approach very Gnome-like, and not really appropriate for LLVM.


I think the premise is a bit off the mark. It's not that these are not for the common user -- it's that they're simply not ready for users at all. Making it easier to expose does not seem like it serves users because those users expect exposed features to work. Yes, they're already exposed via the static analyzer, but I think that's what should be discussed -- some of these alpha checks have been there in an alpha state for years and I don't think that's a good design for a production tool. I'd rather discuss either improving those to make them production quality or removing them entirely, not making it *easier* to access them.

Making the flag sound scary doesn't suffice -- many users never see the flags because they're hidden away in a build script, but they definitely see the diagnostics and file bug reports.


Repository:
  rCTE Clang Tools Extra

https://reviews.llvm.org/D46159